


Blood Rites

by NanDibble



Series: The Blood Series [4]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Original Character(s), Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-11-20
Updated: 2004-11-20
Packaged: 2018-09-14 14:38:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 190,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9186611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NanDibble/pseuds/NanDibble
Summary: As Spike and Buffy try to hold onto their partnership and their love, recently unsouled Spike tries to secure his position as self-proclaimed Master Vampire of Sunnydale...against the wishes of The Powers That Be and the Slayer's ancient mandate. Magic, new arrivals, old friends (and enemies), dreams, visions, e-Bay, tribute blood, and cookies all play a part in the tense give and take between vampire priorities and human necessities.AU, sequel toThe Blood Is the Life.





	1. Good Order

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: All is Joss's. None is mine. No profit. Just more Spikejoy for everyone.

Since Buffy was at work and Dawn at school, that Monday, Spike had taken on the chore of setting up the going-away party for Rupert Giles for that evening. It might be years before the Council of Watchers was fully functional again, building back from its destruction and the death of nearly all its senior members. So it might be years before the responsibilities Giles had taken on would free him for a visit to Casa Summers. Party had to be a total blowout, therefore, to be proportional to Buffy’s loss and, to a lesser degree, Rupert’s.  
  
They’d surely meet again, but never again as Slayer and assigned Watcher. Buffy was in no more need of such, and what need did remain, Spike performed under his self-chosen mandate of “watching her back.” So as Giles’ de facto successor, Spike felt it important that it all be planned and seen to properly. He could plan, when he had to. He could make an agenda and keep to it, stage by stage. If that meant thinking everything out, setting it all going, and checking that it all was accomplished, he could do that.  
  
The new-minted Master Vampire of Sunnydale putting together a proper send-off for Sunnydale’s last serving Watcher. There seemed a symmetry to it.  
  
Somnambulating through the morning, Kennedy at his shoulder as help and correction, Spike made lists and made calls, ordering up the necessary and the whimsical, alerting the people…and others…who should be there, arranging deliveries through his crew, through the sewers and tunnels, when no other means could be found. The three SITs--Kennedy, Amanda, and Rona--collected the belowground deliveries, hauled them indoors, and Kennedy checked them off the lists. No Slayer strength there, but they were willing, able, and young. Good enough.  
  
By noon, Spike was asleep, leaned back in the door arch of the front room. Still on his feet, available to sort whatever hang-ups Kennedy needed a ruling on, braced enough to hold. Returning from her morning classes at the university, Willow poked cautiously at his shoulder until he roused and blinked at her.  
  
“You’re food,” he told her.  
  
“What?”  
  
“You’re in charge of the food. What gets made, what’s delivered. Ken.”  
  
“Yeah, Spike.”  
  
Looking around, Spike found Kennedy seated crossways on the stairs, bent over the clipboard, inspecting the contents of a box.  
  
“Give Red a list of all that’s still to do by way of food,” Spike directed. Looking back to Willow, Spike went on, “See if I’ve forgot anything. Remembered ice, that’s coming. Mostly take-out or catered, but I put you down for cookies. Thought that’d be a good thing. That OK by you?”  
  
Letting her dangling purse and bookbag slide to the floor, Willow nodded. “I have a class at two, but I can take over here until then. Why don’t you get some rest?”  
  
“I’ll do.”  
  
“But you don’t have to,” Willow persisted--eyebrows wrinkling, smiling. “Yesterday, let’s see: you were under a deathwish curse, got yourself blind drunk, nearly got caught by sunrise, made a foul wreck of my bedroom, had…how many fights? three? four? And I guess no sleep since. At least sit down before you fall down.”  
  
Kennedy came then, clipboard tucked under her arm, holding out the list for Willow to take. Some way, Willow didn’t want to: stood looking at her feet, then at the list, and only last and reluctantly at the SIT’s impassive face. For a moment Spike didn’t get what the hold-up was. But before he’d said anything dumb, he recalled that they’d been an item and now weren’t, and people found that kind of history an awkwardness afterward and didn’t know how to behave anymore. He knew such things if he stopped to think them out. Even without the soul, he could still puzzle out what he needed to. That was all right then, he thought, reassured.  
  
“Sorry,” Willow was saying to her former lover, uncomfortably. “About Isadora.”  
  
Offering condolences on account of the SIT’s new playmate getting dusted last night. He understood that. Was still tracking all right.  
  
“Yeah,” Kennedy responded flatly, eyes downcast, still holding the list. Finally, Willow took it, and Kennedy went back to the stairs and the chore of ticking off the paper plates and plastic cups and tableware in the box.  
  
Child was doing fine, Spike thought. Not demanding to be let off work for personal things that didn’t signify. Seeing to the task at hand. She was shaping into a good second: he made a mental note to remember to tell her so. People needed praise, not just correction--more important to them than to vamps. So he needed to remember.  
  
Nothing like as good as Bit, of course, but that wasn’t to be helped. Dawn had her own concerns: keeping up with her classes and her homework, having sister-time with Buffy. That had to take precedence. Couldn’t just expect her to be hanging about to help him, even though that was what they both liked, and missed when her proper priorities kept them apart. Had to get rid of the habit of looking for her to be there. Wasn’t fair to Kennedy, to always feel she was second choice, even though she was. Had to be sensible, responsible about such things, not just want what he wanted.  
  
Willow’s presence reminded Spike of an unaddressed agenda item. “Red,” he said, and waited until she looked up from the list. “Something I need you to do.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“It’s about Bit. Dawn. Need you to get together with her, figure out some different way to keep her here. Anchor her, like.” Spike rubbed his eyes, trying to think how to put it. “She’s anchored down to this dimension with a piece of my soul.”  
  
No need going into the fact that said soul was magically contained inside a suitable Orb, wherever Dawn had hidden it, at his request. Shouldn’t signify, he thought. No need for the witch to know, even though Buffy now did--not where it was, just that he’d set it aside to free him for what he had to do. Or maybe not. Maybe that would matter. Couldn’t be sure, the one way or the other. Was for the witch to decide. Have to remember to tell Bit, then, that it was OK to admit that much. Not like it was a particular secret anymore, since Buffy knew. He made a mental note.  
  
“Anyway,” he continued, “s’not right, her being tied to me that way. If I was to go, she’d be gone too, and that’s not right. So you two get together, figure out some different way, some different anchor that’s more reliable. Instead of me. Have I said it right, that you know what I mean?”  
  
Willow continued to regard him with wrinkle-browed friendly concern. “Are you figuring to go _poof_ , then?”  
  
“Just want Bit clear of it, if it happens, is all. Clear of me. Dunno how to do that myself because I expect it would have to be magic. So I hoped you could take that on. Not tonight, necessarily. What with the party and all. Only soon. First chance you get, to talk it out with her.”  
  
“You do realize,” Willow countered, “there’s more than Dawn gonna be pretty upset if you manage to get yourself dusted, right? You should be talking to Buffy about this.”  
  
“She knows. Can’t be helped. Gonna be a target awhile yet. That’s the risk of starting this, and she knows. Trying to be sensible about it, is all. So you see to that, all right? And the cookies.”  
  
“Yeah. And the cookies. Sure, Spike.” Willow pushed him, not very hard, nodding toward the far side of the room. “Take the chair. Have a nap while I get lunch. I’ll call you before I leave for class: promise.”  
  
Spike set his back harder against the door arch. “’M fine. Keeping track of everything.”  
  
“Sure you are. No pills, even.”  
  
Spike shook his head. “They don’t help. Just make everything worse, after. Not doing that no more.”  
  
“Right. That’s probably best.” She waved the list. “I’ll take care of the cookies and double-check all this. Consider it deputized.”  
  
That was fine: Spike allowed himself to forget about everything to do with food, accepting it as seen to, handed off in proper fashion. Willow would take care of it. She was reliable. He trusted her.  
  
He was days behind on the translation now. There’d been no time, no chance. And tonight, after they got the Watcher out the door and to the airport in good order, there’d be the downtown sweep to be attended to, though the Slayer would probably let the usual Monday patrol slide on account of the party and all. So he wouldn’t have to back her on that. Still, he couldn’t see any way to get caught up on the translation before week’s end, at the soonest, without dropping some other necessary chore like checking that Digger wasn’t up to any new tricks or that some other District Master, of the new ordering, wasn’t aiming something at the enormous target Spike now had on his chest, like the scars of the runes with which the First’s Bringers had marked him.  
  
Not enough hands. Not enough time to attend to everything. But couldn’t let anything go. Had to keep the Slayer as clear as possible: this was his to see to. Vamp business. And Michael wasn’t ready yet to take on much more than his own little patch, the district Spike had assigned him. And Spike’s own crew, up at the factory, still needed considerable supervision. Needed training, like he’d trained the SITs, to come and go and do to his word, reliably, with minimal losses and dumb fuck-ups.  
  
Spike missed Dalton. Useless in a fight, half blind, but a good scholar and translator, Dalton had been. Pity he’d got himself dusted. Spike had no help at all with the Council of Watchers translation, though the pay for that funded all the rest. Couldn’t let it get behind.  
  
Put the word out, he thought. Shop for a replacement for Dalton, offer a finder’s reward. Yeah, that needed doing. Other specialists he needed. Time he set about ordering a court like the one he’d inherited, years back, from the Master-that-was, that Buffy had done for. All scattered or dusted now, have to begin fresh; and anyway, his needs were different from those of a standard vampire court. Should make up a whole agenda for that by itself, get it started.  
  
Comfortably braced against the arch, eyes drifting shut, Spike made a note.  
  
**********  
  
Having private business, they’d withdrawn to the kitchen, leaving the party to proceed for awhile without them in the front room and the den. Buffy set about making a fresh pot of tea, talking over her shoulder to Giles--listening to him, mostly--about his immediate plans, trying to pretend the prospect of his going didn’t scare her down to the bones.  
  
She was trying hard not to let the desertion scenario kick in. Trying not to feel young and overwhelmed and abandoned. Trying to at least act grown-up and sensible no matter how she felt.  
  
Spike helped. Just by being there. By knowing perfectly well all her reflexive emotional hang-ups and reminding her with a word or a touch to her arm that it wasn’t abandonment, that she wasn’t facing the scary future all alone, that Spike never truly left and always had her back. That Giles leaving was now and necessary but wasn’t forever. That he’d left before and would again, and she’d managed. Survived. Endured.  
  
That she therefore should and could be upbeat to Giles about his own anxieties, the challenges and opportunities of reestablishing the council and setting it on a better, truer path. Be encouraging, not needy. Give, not take. Be supportive, not a black hole of suckage. Not start an argument just to vent, ease the emotional tension, or let Spike do it either. Nor Giles, for that matter. They were all three of them wound up about doing the good-bye thing and trying not to let that matter.  
  
Buffy alternately babbled and had gulping intervals of silence. Giles polished his glasses every five seconds. Spike leaned on the refrigerator, blinked sardonically, and tried to pretend he wasn’t smugly aware that when Giles was gone, he’d still be here, so nothing Giles said was worth getting upset about. Coping mechanisms.  
  
She knew perfectly well: it was time. In some ways, it would even be a relief when Giles was gone. Not have to explain and defend her choices and decisions anymore. Not have to know that some of those choices--like her decision against college, like her partnership with Spike--were things Giles would never fully accept or be reconciled to, despite his seldom voicing actual criticism or opposition anymore.  
  
They all knew it was time.  
  
Pouring hot water into the teapot, Buffy asked, “When you get it all put back together, when there really is a council again, what do you think they’ll make…of _us?_ Of what we’re doing now?”  
  
Spike drawled, “Not like there was a whole lot of love to be lost there, pet. On either side.”  
  
Giles commented, “Well, you’ve been very rash, Spike, and the council’s bound to take notice,” in a tone somewhere between annoyed, exasperated, and resigned. He already had his glasses off and produced a handkerchief to clean them.  
  
“Gonna peach on me, are you, Rupert?” Spike inquired, amused.  
  
“You know better than that. But eventually, they will know. In the present muddle of reconstitution, it may be some while before they both have the knowledge and act upon it. And I and others spent some considerable effort enlisting your services. Rewarding your exemplary behavior in regard to closing the Hellmouth. The council made a good faith attempt to reach an accommodation which you’ve now implicitly thrown back in their faces by this new move. Master of Sunnydale, indeed. You might have waited until I’d actually left before rendering it all a complete mockery. Then I’d have at least been able to claim ignorance.”  
  
“Events dictate, Watcher. Couldn’t wait.”  
  
“Well, I’ll provide you with what warning I can. Before the blood delivery is stopped. There’s no longer any point, of course, in my pressing for your appointment as Buffy’s de facto Watcher: that would, I’m afraid, only affect Buffy’s own position adversely. In fact, these present developments virtually eliminate any chance there might have been for arranging a stipend for her.”  
  
“Why?” Spike shot back, finally touched, stung. “S’got nothing to do with her. Put it together all on my own. Kept it clear of her. Why--”  
  
“Spike,” said Giles wearily, “we’re not children here. You’re in residence. You’re her acknowledged…”  
  
As Giles tried to choose a sufficiently sexless word, Buffy put in, “Consort.” Then she lifted her chin. “Lover.” She stuck her right hand back and felt Spike clasp it in both of his. Glancing around, she saw him settling his temper, retreating again to his aloof distance. Turning back to Giles, Buffy made a sharp, dismissive gesture with her free hand. “There never was much chance anyway. It’d set a bad precedent, actually admitting Slayers were worth anything. I wasn’t holding my breath, Giles. We’ll manage.”  
  
“It’s not right,” Giles declared, unreconciled.  
  
“It matters that you tried, and I love you for trying. Don’t give up. It’s groundwork. Maybe a few Slayers down the line, without my awkward attachments…” She didn’t look at Spike. “Or my refusal to take the Boogey Man Credo as gospel or my dislike of being dictated to by a bunch of…dictators. Somebody who’s died a few less times performing her goddam sacred duty. Somebody who hasn’t saved the world a few too many times to expect any thanks for it, much less a salary. Maybe there’ll be a better chance then to push it through.”  
  
“But not in my time. Nor in yours. I’m truly sorry, Buffy.”  
  
“We’ll manage,” Buffy said again, squeezing Spike’s hand because she knew it galled him to have anything denied her, withheld from her, on his account. She wasn’t all that happy about it herself. But as Giles had said, they were none of them children, to expect life to be fair. Everything had a price. Or a cost. Consequences.  
  
“And the translation?” Spike inquired, as if it didn’t matter or he didn’t care.  
  
Pouring tea into his cup and then sipping it, Giles allowed himself a small, pursed smile. “Oh, I expect that will survive the revelation. That’s something they actually do need, after all. I don’t imagine they’ll let their principles impede the practicalities. In that one regard, your being a vampire, and a linguist, gives you the leverage of the unique. Your new title might even impart a certain cachet, like that of obscure expatriate Russian nobility in the age of the Euro. No, I imagine they’ll still be clamoring for results long after you’re sick of spells in otherwise forgotten demon languages, filtered through Babylonian cuneiform and assorted glyphs.”  
  
Spike nodded sharply. “That’s all right, then. That, I can do. Whatever else gets cut off, if that stays, we can manage.”  
  
“So,” said Giles, and brought a thick envelope from an inner pocket of his jacket. He slid the envelope toward Spike along the kitchen island. When Spike made no move to take it, his hands still occupied with holding Buffy’s, Giles explained, “The last of your paperwork.” Opening the envelope, Giles enumerated each of the papers as he laid them out. “Passport, suitably stamped. Birth certificate, with joint nationality, and please note your parents’ names and your birthdate: 5th November, 1976.”  
  
Spike was startled into an abrupt bark of laughter.  
  
“Yes,” said Giles, without glancing up, “you’ve been made one with gunpowder and treason. A little anarchy for the Guy. You wouldn’t specify, so I assigned you a memorable date and a bicentennial you have yet to earn, also memorable.”  
  
“What?” asked Buffy, looking between them.  
  
Spike hitched a shoulder, mouth wryly downturned. “He’s assigned me a holiday, pet: Guy Fawkes’ day. Notable traitor, burned in effigy each year.”  
  
The date was less than two weeks away. Buffy had never given any thought to a vamp’s birthday. “What’s your real birthday, then?” she asked.  
  
Spike shook his head, releasing her hand to fold his arms across his chest--a stubborn, defensive stance.  
  
“Why?” Buffy persisted.  
  
When Spike continued silent, Giles commented, “Public records, I expect. A means of identifying his actual antecedents. Spike, I’ve wondered: are members of your family still alive?”  
  
“Did I leave any alive, you mean. ‘Course not. What all vamps do, innit?”  
  
Giles sighed. “Spike, your reputation for being the worst liar extant is in no danger. What possible difference--”  
  
Spike put his arms around Buffy from behind--folding her into his refusal to provide details. “What’s mine, I keep.”  
  
Buffy leaned into him just enough so he’d feel it, and Giles looked away.  
  
“Yes, quite.” Giles resumed enumerating the papers. “Social Security card. Driver’s license. Transcripts of your purported schooling: please memorize the dates. Copies of various diplomas. A verifiable resume. Medical records establishing a severe allergy to sunlight, possibly even fatal, in case you’re ever thrown in jail.” Gathering up the papers, Giles squared them tidily, then returned them to the envelope. “Nothing as wholesale as the creation of Dawn, but this should survive even intense scrutiny. Should anything else be required, let me know. The council may be decimated, but we still have the resources to produce quite a cast-iron false identity. As much as I could, I dealt with different departments, reliable outside suppliers. Various pretexts. So even the council itself would find it difficult to retrace my path in creating these.” Tapping the envelope, Giles gave Spike a level, sober look. “Don’t rely on them any more than you must.”  
  
“Yeah. I know. Should do for awhile, though. Thanks, Rupert.”  
  
Giles attended to his tea. “Spike, we’ve had our differences, but I’d like to think we’ve come to an understanding. Unless you force it, I will never willingly be your enemy, or act to harm you. And not only for Buffy’s sake. Should either of you--”  
  
Leaning in from the hall, Amanda blurted, “Spike. You have to come.”  
  
As Spike let Buffy go and slid behind Giles, responding to the summons, Buffy followed right behind.  
  
Counting Spike, six people stood in a tense group in the front hall. Dawn, the three SITs…no, _four_ SITs. Buffy recognized the fair-haired girl standing just inside the open doorway as Suzanne.  
  
Standing at the foot of the stairs, Dawn was saying tightly to Spike, “I let her in. I didn’t realize--” She had her taser in her hand, as did Amanda. They were all staring at Suzanne for no reason Buffy could see: in jeans, thick hiking shoes, a blue sweatshirt, and a yellow down vest, dusty-blonde hair in a braid down her back, a rucksack slung over her shoulder, she was looking around comfortably, no different than when she’d left, barely a month ago.  
  
Suzanne said, “Hi, Spike. I’m back.”  
  
Then her face changed. Went golden-eyed and fanged. With no change of pose, no change of expression.  
  
Fingers lifting to touch her forehead, Suzanne said softly, “Oops. Guess I did it again, huh?”  
  
**********  
  
Spike took it all in: the SITs waiting for him to call it, appalled, horrified. And Bit the same, except she was still wound up over having let the fledge in. And Buffy was gone back to the kitchen. Didn’t take thought to know she’d be back in a second with a stake.  
  
Would ruin the party.  
  
Spike was perplexed and annoyed.  
  
With no hesitation he went at the fledge and boosted her back through the open door, hard enough that she cleared the steps and half the front yard before she hit. Spike paused in the doorway long enough to level a finger at Dawn. “Tell Red to do a disinvite. Right now.” Without waiting for an answer he spun, took the steps at a bound, and was off after the fledge, fleeing away down the dark street.  
  
She was going a good clip, straight ahead. It would take him a while to overtake her if she didn’t jink, if he couldn’t cut an angle, cut her off. Seeing where she was headed, he waited to see if she’d go inside. Could corner her there, no problem. But she barely slowed, realizing Casa Mike was empty now, and kept racing in long, easy strides.  
  
Couldn’t be above two weeks turned and could already shed game face, though she couldn’t maintain human countenance very long. Already had enough control of her senses that she could pass a house, know if a vamp was inside or not. Though Spike was running quiet, she’d know he wasn’t but about six strides back and except for the running, he got no sense of fear from her. That was confirmed when she glanced around at him, grinning, and commented, “How come you never said how much fun this was? Did you figure if you didn’t tell, nobody would guess?”  
  
“Something like. What you doing here, Sue?”  
  
She faced front again but kept talking. “Did you know something like 90% of female fledges don’t make it through their first year?”  
  
“Never counted, pet. Though that seems a fair enough figure.”  
  
“You’re going to help me beat the odds.”  
  
“I am, am I? Now why would I bother about what a fledge wants?”  
  
“What do _you_ want, Spike?”  
  
Spike had been scanning driveways, looking for something suitable. Spotting it, he bent to scoop up a baseball-sized rock and threw, all in the one motion. Didn’t try for her legs, knew his aim wasn’t that good. Went for the broadest target, caught her right between the shoulder blades, knocked her tumbling. She was up the next minute, but he was there and backhanded her across the face. The second time she sprang up and he put her down, she had the sense to stay down, crouched, watching him.  
  
Strolling up and down a driveway, he kept between her and Casa Summers. If she bolted, she’d have to head away. And though she’d be hard to take in a foot race, there were other stones to hand and he’d just bring her down again. And no way was she gonna outfight him--with weapons or without. He took his time, lighting a cigarette.  
  
“Got better things to do tonight than chase you across the landscape, moron.”  
  
“Then why did you?” she shot back. “And why’d you call me a moron?”  
  
“Well, that’s plain, innit?” He tipped a hand at her, crouched on somebody’s lawn, against a hedge. “You did this on purpose. That makes you a moron.”  
  
“Then you’re a moron, too--right?”  
  
“That I am, pet. But I’m a bigger, stronger, older moron than you, and I could rip your head off just like that. An’ you know it. So what’s this all in aid of, tell me?”  
  
“I thought….” she began, then shook her head hard, shutting herself up. When she lifted her head again, she’d forced game face away. Looked almost like the child he’d known, except for the preternatural stillness. No pulse. No sweet girl bloodsmell. Except for the being dead. “I didn’t think you’d be like this,” she said softly, as if to herself.  
  
“Oh, is that so. How’d you expect me to be, then? Figure I’d be all concerned, little SIT gone and made herself a monster, want to look out for you, like? Teach you the error of your ways?” Fast, he was down on his knees, shouting in her face. “It’s too late for that! That child is dead, and you’re what murdered her! Are you so stupid you don’t even know that?”  
  
She turned her face away, pulling fretfully at her braid, fallen across her shoulder. “It’s hard to know what I’m showing. It wants to change. It’s like trying to hold my breath. Like it used to be, anyway. Because, well, don’t need to breathe anymore. Except to talk. It’s so strange, Spike. Like I thought it would be…and yet not. But…I still want it. Want the power and the speed and everything so bright. The smells….”  
  
She moved slightly, changing balance, reacting to what Spike had caught at least a minute before: slow, unhurried footsteps, and the quicker patter of a dog. About a block away, approaching, opposite side of the street.  
  
Spike said, “You budge an inch, I will put you down.”  
  
“But I want….”  
  
“Don’t give a damn what your demon wants. All demons want the same. You make it mind or I will.”  
  
She was trying to hold herself still. Trying to obey. He could tell. But she wasn’t but a fledge, and as the dog-walking woman came level, the fledge lunged upright and forward. So Spike hammered her. Caved in her cheekbone, likely broke her jaw. Still had to close a hand around her wrist to lock her down and hit her twice more before her demon quit fighting to get free, get at the oblivious food.  
  
But once he’d done what she couldn’t, deflected her demon, she stayed down, making no noise at all. Not whining or complaining. She’d always been good that way, he recalled.  
  
“Now you listen,” he said finally. “This is my town now, and you can’t hunt without leave. Mine…or somebody’s.” He thought a while more--the time it took to smoke another cigarette, since the first got lost before he’d barely finished half of it. “You don’t go within a five block range of Casa Summers again. You got that?”  
  
She bobbed her head. Likely couldn’t talk all that well at the moment.  
  
Spike considered and discarded two more alternatives. “All right, the mark is the theater downtown. You be there before midnight. I’ll tell you where to go from there. You see any other vamps, you keep still, keep hid, till they’re gone. Situation’s…touchy right now. Setting borders, setting limits. If I don’t find you at the mark, you’re on your own. None of my concern. Not anymore. There’s a reason most vamp bints don’t survive their first year. First month, even. If you don’t want to be a statistic, you do what I say. You fucking _mind_.”  
  
Again, she nodded.  
  
Pitching the butt, Spike turned on his heel and started pacing back toward Casa Summers. At least wasn’t likely she’d hunt, not with her jaw like that.  
  
He’d settle her later. Too tired to think about any non-agenda problems at the moment. The important thing was seeing Rupert had a proper send-off, getting him gone. Then he’d deal with the rest.  
  
**********  
  
Coming back from the airport, everybody was yawning and subdued. Well, nearly everybody, Dawn corrected: although Spike had managed to stay intermittently awake on the outward leg, as soon as Giles’ luggage was pulled out of the back, Spike tumbled over the bench seat into the vacated space and totally conked.  
  
Inside the uncomfortably bright terminal, after the baggage was taken care of, Dawn pulled out of the group hug and the goodbyes as soon as she decently could and went outside where she could keep an eye on the SUV, parked in the yellow-striped pick-up/drop-off stretch near the doors. Pulling off the silly cardboard party hat, she pitched it in a convenient bin.  
  
The past two days, at least four attempts had been made on Spike’s life. Dawn wanted to be uber-vigilant against another. Nobody had appointed her to sentry duty. Nobody had forbidden it, either. Hand in the pocket that held her taser, elbows pulled tight against her sides in the chilly air, Dawn paced the curb and watched.  
  
Eventually everybody came out--Xander and Anya splitting off from Willow and going to Xander’s truck, Buffy and the SITs visibly dragging. They hadn’t gotten any sleep last night either and probably none through the day.  
  
Noticing Dawn, Buffy said, “You shouldn’t go off like that.”  
  
Falling in behind Willow, Dawn shrugged. “I’m not a Scooby or a SIT.”  
  
“Then why did you come?” Buffy asked crossly, triggering the door locks.  
  
Dawn only shrugged again. She slid the back door open and climbed in. She felt cranky, guilty, and anxious, all of the feelings combining as a sulky withdrawal she didn’t want to inflict on Buffy, who was enough on edge already.  
  
Dawn was supposed to have planned the party but had blown it off in the upset of Spike’s marking her and refusing afterward to be anywhere around her. So Spike’d had to do the party set-up himself on top of all the rest of the crowbars, anvils, and knives he was juggling. All her fault--just like everything else.  
  
That the mark had been...invalidated by another set over it, by a vamp who’d then been dusted, meant that things were supposedly back to normal now. Only they weren’t. Although present, Spike was more distant than ever. Shutting himself off, shutting her away. She'd barely been able to exchange two words with him since returning home from school or during the party and she doubted he'd really heard even them. Too distracted. Too focused on Buffy or Giles or all the invisible spinning hardware. And then Sue showing up, on top of everything: another concern added. Another piece of phantom hardware. Dawn could feel a crash coming.  
  
Maybe, she thought hopefully, it was only that he was so totally wiped out in the aftermath of all that had happened. That hope lasted about two seconds because this hadn’t begun last night or even last week.  
  
He didn’t move except when a turn rolled him to one side or the other. Facing backward, chin on arms folded on the bench seat, Dawn watched him worriedly, feeling a smothered, sad anxiety.  
  
They dropped off Amanda at home, then Kennedy and Rona together at the boarding house. Finally Buffy pulled up in front of the theater marquee, turned off the engine, and twisted around in her seat, looking for Spike.  
  
“He’s out of it,” Dawn reported quietly, pointing with a thumb.  
  
In the front seat Willow asked Buffy, “What d’you think: just go home?”  
  
Dawn shook her head. “He has the sweep still to do.” Not waiting for any more discussion, Dawn leaned over the seat back and poked and shook him a few times. “Spike. Spike, wake up. We’re at the mark.”  
  
He went tight and startled for a second. Then he pushed up on an elbow, looking around, rubbing his eyes. “Right. Next to last on the agenda.” Abruptly unwinding, he popped the rear hatch and slid out, holding a sack of stakes. As he shut the hatch solidly, Dawn was down on the curb and back beside him.  
  
“What’s this, then?”  
  
“I’m staying. At least until it’s time to start the sweep.”  
  
“You and whose great aunt? None of that nonsense, Bit. Back in the van.” He pushed, trying to turn and steer her, but she set her feet and grasped the curve of the SUV’s rear corner. And of course he wasn’t gonna outright shove her.  
  
“I was good about last night,” she argued. “Played good soldier, stayed home like you said. But we have to talk.”  
  
“And get home how? I’ll be out here till nearly sunup.”  
  
“Buffy will come back,” Dawn proposed indifferently.  
  
“Buffy will go home and have her beauty sleep. And so will you. School day, work day tomorrow, Bit.”  
  
Willow lowered her window enough to lean out. “What’s the problem?”  
  
Spike came up onto the sidewalk. “No problem. Just saying goodbye to Bit.” Looking around but past Dawn, not meeting her eyes, Spike added softly, “Don’t want to have a thing about this here. You go home now.”  
  
“Spike, please. It’s important.”  
  
“No. Got no head for more chat anyway. We’ll talk. Tomorrow…or the next day, maybe. Soon. Call you, maybe. Something.”  
  
She was making it worse. She could see him trying to sort through the descending hardware, all the concerns backed up and overdue, trying to find a gap to slot her into and not finding any. She could imagine and feel his frustration. And she hadn’t the heart to push or insist anymore.  
  
She patted his arm. “Be careful. Take a pill.”  
  
“Trying not to do that no more.” He lifted his head, looking blankly at the sky. “Maybe. If I have to. Gonna be all right here, nothing for you to worry about.”  
  
Willow called, “Dawn?”  
  
“All right, all right!” Dawn yanked the rear door and flung herself inside far enough to draw it shut. The locks clicked. She watched Spike turn and head slowly toward the alley as the SUV pulled away.  
  
From the front, Buffy directed, “Seat belt,” and Willow inquired, “What was that all about?” Neither of them sounded angry or impatient.  
  
Facing forward, Dawn did up her seat belt.  
  
Willow persisted, “Dawnie?”  
  
They waited out a red light. When the SUV went forward again, Dawn said abruptly, “I don’t like this. I’m worried about him. He’s not connecting well or right anymore. No matter how he tries, or I do. I’m afraid it’s the soul: setting it aside. Afraid he’s coming unstuck and drifting and I can’t reach….” The image in her mind was of helplessly watching an untethered boat moving slowly farther from shore with the pull of the tide.  
  
Which didn’t matter because Willow’s remarking to Buffy something about the Devon coven told Dawn nobody had heard her anyway.  
  
**********  
  
Finishing a cigarette and pacing the alley to stay alert, Spike checked his watch: 11:16. Watcher would be off, then. So that was done and hadn’t gone off too badly except for Clem startling Red considerable by showing some bumpies, wrinklies, and sudden visual nastiness as the punchline of an interminable joke. Doing a Beetlejuice, Dawn had called it, when she could stop laughing.  
  
Important to have a few of the more harmless demon types present, party like that. Remind Rupert not all demons had nothing on their minds except eating the citizenry and trying to end the world from some combination of malice and boredom.  
  
Snacks Clem had brought had been popular too. And the Angharan had been fine in the charades. Didn’t think anybody had noticed anything off about the punch or twigged to the actual nature of the crisp meat on skewers, with various dipping sauces. Spike had never been partial to kitten himself, but most kinds of demon liked it. Not as if it’d been human, after all: Spike had checked and slid the other away before anybody else had a chance to try it, had a word with Gregor afterward. Actually, several words, a shove, and poke in the eye.  
  
Cookies had been good, though. Went well with the punch.  
  
So that was accomplished and all right. He could forget about it now.  
  
Vamp approaching. Several. He watched as they came into range of the streetlights: Emil, Mary, Kehoe, Strait. All in the colors, the black and the scarlet. All walking in the open as though they owned this town, which they did, when the sun was gone. Proudly game-faced, looking purposeful and dangerous. And from behind him, up the alley, another group coming: Bitter, Liz, Carlos, and then Huey, leading off from behind.  
  
As the latter group came into talking distance, Spike directed, “Huey--coffee.”  
  
Not like Spike didn’t have the pills, had some right in the duster pocket, but didn’t want to be relying on them so much. He’d be frazzled and flying all night and his judgment wasn’t the best at such times. And then the crash afterward, when the strangest of the dreams got in and occupied him like a conquered territory with no hope of escape. If coffee would do, he’d stick to that.  
  
As Huey sent Carlos, the current junior, running the errand, the squad gathered around Spike to get their directions for the night.  
  
Spike leaned his shoulders against the alley wall beside a dumpster, lighting a fresh cigarette. “All right, looking tonight for anybody trolling for druggies. One squad. After last night, whoever’s defying the schedule will likely be out in packs of three or four so as not to get caught on their own. So you stay together too. Anything you run across that’s out of your league, too many or too well armed, whatever, fall back, send a runner to the mark to tell me, and I’ll call it. Don’t want to get in a pitched territorial battle yet. All clear so far?  
  
Strait raised his hand, and Spike nodded. “Who leads off?” the young vamp wanted to know. Had about twenty visible piercings: currently fascinated with pain and vamp healing.  
  
“Huey. And Mary to second.” Huey wasn’t even close to the best fighter, but he kept a cool head, wasn’t easily rattled, and right now, Spike considered that the most important consideration. He stopped, reviewing what he’d said and what therefore remained to say. “Right. Druggies. Start at Sycamore, work around from there, east to west. Dust any vamps you find. Dealers are fair game too, if they’re not too wasted. Share ‘em around if you do, though. Don’t want nobody incapable on a sweep.” Not much of the designated protective scent yet in circulation: do as many of the dealers as possible until it was, when feeding on ‘em would have to be regretfully prohibited. “Let the druggies be. And drunks and so forth that you come across. Pass ‘em by. Stick to vamps and the odd dealer for now. Any questions.”  
  
Again, Strait lifted a hesitant hand.  
  
Spike said, “What.”  
  
“Haven’t fed.”  
  
“Then you’ll have to go hungry, won’t you?” Spike flicked a glance to Huey, who nodded. Huey would see that the lad had sufficient chance at the night’s first prey. Otherwise, underfed and desperate, the boy’s demon might push him into doing something dumb.  
  
“Keeping Carlos as a runner for awhile,” Spike said. “So go on. Back here to report at five.”  
  
He distributed stakes from the bag, and the squad headed out in good order. So that was sorted and all right. Presently Carlos came with the coffee--double espresso, triple sugar, Spike’s current favorite. Uncapping the cup, Spike sent the boy to mind the back of the alley, to warn of anything coming up from behind. In a couple of days, Spike would have to change the gather mark from the theater--any point, used too often, was asking for an ambush. But for now it was convenient and handy to the Espresso Pump, that now kept all-night hours because of the recent increase in nighttime business. Mainly Spike’s doing. He ran a tab there now for himself and those of his crew who had a taste for the stuff.  
  
The concentrated caffeine hit his system almost like the first gulp of good whiskey but with opposite effect: awakening prickles everywhere and a wash of stronger alertness, jumping the reach of his perceptions almost to those of sight.  
  
A vamp hiding under a parked van, opposite side of the street. With a little concentration, he could smell her, though vamps didn’t have much scent.  
  
Having downed about half the remaining coffee, Spike said quietly, “Coast’s clear now. Come on.”  
  
As Sue emerged from under the van, dragging her carryall, Spike checked his watch: ten to midnight.  
  
“All right,” he said as she stood in front of the dumpster, “let’s see the damage.” He set thumb and finger on her chin and turned her head, inspecting. Looked to be about halfway healed, still plenty showing. Good enough. “Here,” he said, fishing in a duster pocket, and produced the two bags of tribute blood delivered for his evening meal. He figured he was fed up good enough not to need them and anyway he was used to going quite awhile without. Not as if he was a fledge, needed feeding every night. He watched her tear into the bags and gulp the blood with ravenous haste.  
  
“It’s cold,” she complained, but pitched the empty bags into the dumpster, obedient to his nod.  
  
“Ain’t got the time,” Spike said, “to be lumbered with a fledge. So I’m sending you off to somebody who has. District Master, old enough to have trained up a thousand fledges, knows what he’s about. Long as you mind him as best you can, he won’t just lose patience and dust you, on account of he’s a bit short-handed at the moment. He’ll have other fledges around, most likely. Train you all. Name of Digger.”  
  
“Want you,” Sue objected. “Came back here for you.”  
  
Ignoring the comment, Spike went on, “Digger wants me gone real bad. Had a couple of tries at it and I don’t expect he’ll quit now. You take notice of what you can. He won’t know you, doesn’t know you were a SIT. You see it stays that way. You’re just a local fledge, got turned here, just before the Hellmouth was closed. He’s not apt to ask you much--nobody cares where a fledge came from, who they used to be, nothing like that. You just sing small, do what you’re told, keep your eyes and ears open. I’ll set up some way to check on you, swap news and like that. You come on something interesting, you pass it along.”  
  
“Spy,” Sue remarked, liking that.  
  
Finishing the coffee, Spike nodded. “Digger’s current fuck is a bint calls herself ‘Star.’ You stay wide of her. Don’t give her a reason to dust you. ‘Cause she will if she thinks you’re a threat, getting too cozy with Digger. You pick somebody else, somebody you figure is a good fighter, to get cozy with. Fledge needs a protector, a partner, specially bints. Digger’s not for you, though he’ll likely fuck you from time to time. Try you out, keep you in line. When--”  
  
“Didn’t come back for that,” Sue interrupted sullenly.  
  
“Well, that’s just your bad luck and bad judgment, innit? Told you, I ain’t got the time. An’ I’m not the toy surprise in your box of sweets, just reach in and take. Part of what you gave up in letting yourself get turned. S’not up to you anymore, you’re not the queen of the May, you’re maybe one step up from a dog bitch in heat and a bloody liability till you can get your damn demon under some sort of control, and nobody’s gonna give you any slack whatever until that happens. Until you can mind. Until you can choose and not just let yourself get flung around by whatever wind that blows. Might be years. Might be never.” He pitched the coffee container into the dumpster.  
  
“I’ll learn,” Sue declared. “Didn’t pick the first vamp I bumped into, to turn me. The plane had a layover at O’Hare and I got my gear and left--big city, lots to choose from. I hunted every night. Quizzed ‘em, dusted all that didn’t suit, until I found one who remembered the First World War. Nearly a century. Bribed him to turn me and keep watch till I rose, not just become another forgotten meal. Jeffrey. Dusted him after, of course. Chicago’s OK, easy hunting there, but I always planned to come back here. To you. So you’d teach me how to survive. Like before.”  
  
“And I’m passing you along to Digger,” Spike replied, mildly annoyed by her ignorant arrogance, thinking he’d give a fraction of a damn about her history, her stupid choices. Thinking her priorities were all that mattered. “Where maybe you can be some use to me, but likely not. At least you’ll be out of my hair.”  
  
She fiddled with her braid, frowning. “Send me to Mike, then.”  
  
“No. Michael’s hardly past a fledge himself, you know that. He’s got enough on his plate without you. And you’d be no use to me there.”  
  
She didn’t argue, which meant she was planning to go hunt Michael anyway. And therefore would be blundering into some other District Master’s territory, trespassing, and likely gone before daybreak. Feeling his eyes go yellow, Spike was tempted to dust her himself, except he was too tired to bother.  
  
“Michael won’t take you on.”  
  
“Maybe he would.”  
  
“Not if I tell him No. Unlike you, Michael knows how to mind.”  
  
That finally got through to her. She bent her head, lowered her eyes--at last assuming a submissive pose.  
  
Spike said, “When you can shed game face ten minutes at a go, maybe I’ll listen to what you want. Until then, you’re just a nuisance and a chore. Better Digger’s than mine. You do what I say or I’m done with you, right here.”  
  
“All right, Spike,” Sue said softly. “I’ll be good. You’ll see.”  
  
“You better be, or else you’ll be gone. Digger won’t put up with your nonsense any more than I would. Except he needs numbers and has a reason to want to keep you standing, which is more than I have.”  
  
She sniffled, which made him look at her. Tears were rolling down her ridged, fanged face. “Why are you being so mean to me?”  
  
“Fuck off,” said Spike, and whistled up Carlos from the far end of the alley. “She’s one of Digger’s,” Spike explained. “Only a fledge, ain’t quite caught on to the new rules. Gonna give her a pass, this once. See her to the edge of his territory, point her toward the lair. Don’t touch her--don’t want Digger to smell us on her or we might as well not bother. Come back here after.”  
  
Carlos nodded smartly and led her away. Carlos was fairly reliable. Should go all right unless she decided to feed along the way. Well, that was gonna happen, Spike knew. Had to expect it. Nothing he could do about it. Couldn’t control everything and it’d be stupid even to try. Maybe could moderate the numbers, night by night, but only an idiot would try to alter or suppress fundamental vamp nature. Had to work within what was possible, accept the limits.  
  
Spike didn’t expect much. Figured about an 80% chance Suzanne would get all caught up in the new place, new way of thinking and being, get caught up in the always-shifting interlace of allegiances and enmities that was life in a vampire pack, and forget the rest. Forget whatever tie she’d imagined she had to him. Likely sell him out, if the chance came, to win favor from her new master. He didn’t intend to trust her. But she might survive. He’d done the best for her he could think of. And she’d known enough to choose a vamp of some age to turn her. Inherited an old, experienced demon. The results were plain: still only a fledge, but more control and awareness than most who were many times her age. She might have a chance. No going back now to what had been before.  
  
Last agenda item for tonight was deciding where he’d lair up to sleep, come sunup. Still be awhile before he’d risk returning to Casa Summers or his factory, either one, on anything like a regular basis. Be the same as extending the invisible target on his chest to cover those places, each of them, like a tent. An invitation to mass attack and firebombs--the sort that had reduced Casa Spike to smoking rubble. Nor was Spike stupid enough to believe Digger, and a few others, didn’t have or couldn’t get minions who could be abroad during the day, poking and looking. He could consider nothing safe until he’d made it safe, shut out all avenues of attack. Until he’d done that, he had to stay unpredictable, elusive. And thoroughly wipe out whatever came at him, till the opposition left off trying.  
  
Last he’d heard, the bounty Digger had set on him was $ 10,000; after last night, it was likely up at least by half. Doing Spike had become a valuable commodity, ripe for speculation. The bounty, and the current odds, were up on the board at Willy’s, quoted for all to see. Were he not involved, Spike would have liked the odds and taken a chance on collecting. Only natural.  
  
A vamp was most vulnerable asleep. So Spike had to make himself scarce and hard to find. Never the same place twice. Anyplace would do so long as it was away from the sun, away from anybody he cared about or wanted to protect, and big enough to curl up in.  
  
Sorting among the alternatives, he jerked, realizing he’d been dozing on his feet again. He smacked a fist hard against the edge of the dumpster. The pain brought him back to alertness, but that would fade fast. Even the dumpster was starting to look good to him: enclosed dark space once the lid was shut. Quiet. Smell didn’t matter. Great way to find yourself falling toward an incinerator at high noon, out at the rubbish tip. Stupid even to consider it.  
  
No more coffee until Carlos got back to fetch it.  
  
Reluctantly, resignedly, Spike reached into the duster pocket for the vial of pills.


	2. Components, Influences

At breakfast Tuesday morning, Willow woke up enough to notice Dawn and they spun together, each gripping the other’s arms, both saying, “We have to--” and then shutting up. Willow realized Dawn must have had a blinking-strange incoherent early morning phone call from Spike too.  
  
So they both said simultaneously, “Later.”  
  
“Espresso Pump?” Dawn asked.  
  
“Magic Box,” Willow counter proposed, and Dawn considered, then bobbed a nod.  
  
Then they whirled away into their separate preparations for the day.  
  
There was no need to set a time because Willow know Dawn got out of school at three. So they convened at the big table at the Magic Box in the familiar nose-twitching mélange of smells, with the implicit consent of Anya, busy with customers since it was only two days to Halloween.  
  
Setting down a cappuccino and a cold can of Dr. Pepper, Willow commented, “Guess he’s taking those pills again.”  
  
“He can handle it,” Dawn defended, sliding her backpack off and depositing it on a chair. Then she settled and popped the top of her soda.  
  
“Sure,” Willow responded skeptically. “Like Dr. Franklin and the stims. Maybe he’ll go walkabout soon.”  
  
Dawn shook her head hard enough to make her hair fly. “Not on the agenda. Too much backed up to take a break.”  
  
“Yeah. That’s what Dr. Franklin said. Before he freaked, collapsed, and admitted to Sheridan there was a problem.”  
  
“It’s not like that, and anyway, Franklin wasn’t a vamp.”  
  
“You think? So.” Willow poked the straw into her cup and bent it at exactly the right angle. “About the soul.”  
  
Dawn shook her head again. “That’s his agenda, not mine. Sure, he called to say I could talk about it--everything except where it is. At least I _think_ that’s what it was about. A call like that at six in the morning, from Loopy Land, some interpretation is required. No, that can wait. What I’m worried about is Digger’s Plan B.”  
  
While Willow sipped her cappuccino, Dawn explained that when Digger had taken her as a pax bond, a kind of formal hostage to secure a meeting, and Spike had come for her, Digger had ended up throwing a big handful of sparkly powder at Spike. It had kind of sizzled, gone into a glowy field at contact, and then vanished.  
  
“Spike said it was nothing,” Dawn commented, elbows on the table and head low, hair falling curved onto its surface, “but I don’t like it. Plan A, the deathwish, was pretty bad. I’m not gonna assume Plan B was just a bust and a waste of whatever Digger paid for it just because Spike says so.”  
  
“Everything seems pretty normal. New normal. Never would have thought Spike would need chemical help to get even more hyper.” Willow rolled her eyes expressively. “He seemed OK yesterday. For Spike.”  
  
“He didn’t drink the tribute blood: there were no empty bags in the trash.”  
  
“It was a party. Everybody around. He’s shy.”  
  
“I checked the basement trash too.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“I think he gave it to Sue. I don’t think he dusted her. He wouldn’t give me a straight answer.”  
  
Willow thought about that, drawing small circles on the table with a fingertip. They both knew he’d dusted Kim, another SIT who’d been turned. “Why wouldn’t he?” Willow asked finally.  
  
“Don’t know. It’s not as if he answers his frelling cell phone. Or will stand still long enough for me to actually _ask_ him something anymore. I tried to get him to talk to me about Plan B last night but oh no, it’s a school day, have to stuff the Bit back in the van, no time for idle chit-chat.” Dawn’s mimicking of Spike’s accent and cadences was deliberately bad and sour.  
  
So that had been what the little drop-off hiccup had been about, Willow thought. “It wasn’t a good time. He was busy.”  
  
“When _isn’t_ he busy? Back to topic: what do you think the sparkles were? A spell, sure--but what kind of spell?”  
  
“No good answer to that. That was just the delivery method. It would be like looking at smoke and trying to know what kind of wood was burning. Or paper, or….” Willow frowned, considering, and Dawn kept still and watched, letting her. “He was wearing my locket by that time. That would block most kinds of…. No, he wasn’t: he’d given it to Buffy. So, no: he didn’t have any magical protection when he went in. And the dust _reacted_.”  
  
“Bad sign?”  
  
“Could be. No immediate, obvious effect…. Was Digger wearing gloves, handling it?”  
  
Dawn looked for the answer in the ceiling. “Nope.”  
  
“And no kind of chanting or visible preparation?”  
  
“Nothing. Just grab and fling.”  
  
“And it reacted on contact.” Willow paused to sip. “I don’t like the sound of that either. There’s two things I can do, Dawn. One is test him for magical influence. See if anybody has…handled him, magically, in the last few days in a way that still has effects. The other is to go to the source and find out.”  
  
Dawn’s eyebrows arched high. “You expect Digger to be chatty?”  
  
“Not Digger. The one who made the spell. My sometime roommate _cum_ pet: Amy the Rat. Or at least that’s my first guess. She’s gone into the spells-for-hire line lately. And she’s not too particular about what she whips up. Or for who. If I test Spike, I can try to get a magical signature off him in the process. All magic has…the flavor of its maker. Because nothing’s mass produced. Each spell is individual, hand-crafted. Full of the will and intent of its maker, that shaped it. I think I know the work of all the resident mages and witches in the area. Aren’t that many. Most left when the Hellmouth started to get all rumbly, flare-y. Contrary to popular belief, there _is_ such a thing as too much power.” Making a wry face, Willow sipped and swallowed. “But the Hellmouth is shut now, so it’s possible somebody’s come back and has been laying low, or some stranger has come on the strength of Sunnydale’s reputation as a power well, power just for the reaching out and grabbing. It’s not just vamps that are attracted. Or were.” Willow twisted around in her chair. “Anya?”  
  
At the register, inserting a purchase in one of the new Harry Potter themed bags, Anya said to the customer, with bright enthusiasm, “Thanks for spending your money here!” Waiting until the customer left, Anya cast a suspicious glance toward two teenagers fumbling with the candle display, then hustled within talking distance of the table. “What is it? I’m really very busy.”  
  
“I can help out until five,” Dawn volunteered, and got a surprised look and a wide grin from Anya.  
  
“For free?”  
  
“Usual rates.”  
  
“Oh, all right. Very well. Go watch the candles, then.” Anya settled on the edge of the chair Dawn vacated, still watching the store.  
  
Willow said, “I need some spell components. I’ll make up a list, but since you’re so busy, I’ll collect them myself. Will that be OK?”  
  
Anya considered, then said, “Go ahead. You haven’t stolen anything in several months. Perhaps I should consider you reformed. Like Dawn.”  
  
“Thanks a lot. Actually, it will be charged to Spike’s account.”  
  
“Then fine--I always add a 10% service charge. For carrying the account. I want to see the list, though. Any component over $ 10, I want to see and verify.”  
  
Willow sighed. You had to take Anya as you found her or not at all. Anya didn’t especially mean to be rude--she just _was_. As rain wasn’t intentionally wet. It just came that way.  
  
“Nobody’s yet met the reserve on the Chaos Stone,” Anya mentioned. “But the bidding’s come within $ 10,000.”  
  
“Better than last time,” Willow responded. “Maybe e-Bay’s not the best place.”  
  
“To sell it, no. Of course not. But nothing like it to spread the word that a rare artifact like that is on offer. I’ve had much more interest from the major European dealers since the first time I put it up. And raised the price accordingly.”  
  
“Oh? What are you asking now?”  
  
“It’s at sixty thousand dollars at the moment. But that the bidding is even coming close makes me think it’s still underpriced. I don’t think I’ll let it go for less than a hundred thousand.”  
  
Willow whistled silently. “Major moolah. Aren’t you worried about burglary?”  
  
Anya shook her head--a brisk, tight little motion. Her hair at the moment was a burnished chestnut. Willow thought last week it had been champagne blonde, but it was easy to lose track. Generally, the dark colors were expressions of Anya’s confidence; the lighter colors were demands for attention, reassurance, brittle and hesitant.  
  
Anya said, “I’ve given it to Olaf to guard. Few burglars can do a dimensional jump. And then, well, Olaf.” She spread her hands, indicating the matter was self-evident. Which maybe it was, since Olaf was a troll, about eight feet high and broad in proportion, and Anya’s ex.  
  
Willow winced. “You sure that’s a good idea? I mean…Olaf.”  
  
“Once I’ve had my vengence, it’s redundant to carry a grudge.”  
  
“But are you sure that’s the way Olaf looks at it?” After all, Olaf hadn’t been a troll residing in another dimension until Anya had made him that way--the start of her career as a Vengeance Demon. “I mean, he wasn’t all that happy, the last time you saw him.”  
  
“Oh, piffle. That doesn’t mean anything. And I’ve seen him since. Popped over for an afternoon. To make sure there were no hard feelings. Besides, Olaf gives excellent orgasms. He’s quite large, you know. If he’d just been content to confine himself to giving them to me, we never would have had any problem. Not that orgasms are everything, I don’t mean that. Pretty close, but not everything. After all, there’s also money. And in that department, Olaf leaves a lot to be desired. Zip,” Anya reported smugly, then followed with a sad headshake. “He never would save and has no concept of compound interest. To say nothing of high-yield bonds. However, that means I can pay him a pittance and have him think it’s a fortune. So it all comes right in the end.” Birdlike and sudden, Anya looked at Willow directly. “What are the components for: more smells?”  
  
“I’ll need more of that soon, but no. Magical influence check-up. On Spike.”  
  
“Good! Because I thought yesterday he didn’t look at all well. Allowing for his being dead, of course. Vampire, naturally. But beyond that.”  
  
“Well, there’s that deathwish, of course: really takes it out of somebody, that does. You don’t just bounce back in a day, afterward.” Willow frowned, reflecting that shrugging off Anya’s remarks probably wasn’t wise: Anya saw a lot. Anya was the first to notice Spike’s soul, when nobody else had a clue. “Did you notice anything in particular?”  
  
But it was too late: reacting to the dismissal, Anya had gone all stiff and huffy. “If there’s nothing else, I’m very busy, as I said.”  
  
As Anya stood, Willow set a hand on her wrist. “Anya, I’m sorry. I always want to assume everything’s OK. But if it’s not, I need to know. And, after all, well…Spike,” she said, in the same tone as Anya had invoked the surly awfulness of Olaf. Calling up the whole gestalt of a person, and all their history and nuances of relationship.  
  
Willow knew Anya had a soft spot for Spike, even if she did charge him an extra 10%.  
  
Anya settled back, allowing herself to be mollified. “Of course he was tired, and radically overpeopled, and ready to punch out any interference with the smooth unfolding of the party, and twitchy toward Buffy and prickly to Giles, and blah, blah, blah. Just what you’d expect, of course. But…he seemed abstracted. Not completely _there_ somehow. Like somebody with headphones, and you’re talking to them, and they’re not hearing you at all or barely because they’re actually listening to something completely different. Not music, because he likes music. Whatever he was hearing was something he didn’t like. And it’s not like Spike not to be present. Except when he’s drunk, of course. Which he wasn’t. Not last night. And it wasn’t like that, anyway. More like headphones, as I said.” Describing her impressions, Anya had been frowning, thoughtful. Concluding, she brightened, pleased to have chosen an apt analogy. Then her expression changed completely: closed, blank, secretive. She shot Willow a sly, assessing glance.  
  
“We know,” Willow said quietly, uncapping her cup to get at the last of its contents. “About the soul. That he’s shut it away someplace.”  
  
The tightness in Anya’s face relaxed. “I didn’t want to be the one to tell. This time.” She shrugged. “His business, after all. How has Buffy….”  
  
“Under negotiations. Nobody’s happy. He claims it’s necessary.”  
  
“Well, of course. Dealing with vamps, opposing the Powers, how’s he to do that tripping over a soul every two minutes? There’s a reason vamps don’t come equipped with souls, after all, just as there’s a reason vultures don’t have feathers on their necks. Why, they’d collect decay, all kinds of diseases, no good way to get them clean. Vultures, not vamps.”  
  
Willow nodded to show she’d understood.  
  
Turning thoughtful again, Anya remarked, “That’s not the problem, if there is a problem. I’ve known Spike soulless for years and years. That’s just normal. This was different…and possibly magical. I hadn’t considered that. You think of vampires as pretty impenetrable, magically speaking. But they’re not. Quite a lot of spells involve vampires…as part of the components. Because they’re intrinsically magical, I suppose. Their innate magic, just being what they are, generally sheds any outside magic that tries to affect them. So I don’t like the sound of that deathwish. Not at all. Somebody’s found the right angle, the right deflection to hit him. So it’s good you’re going to check him out. Get your components, Willow. This time, this once--it’s on the house.”  
  
**********  
  
Parking at the foot of the weedy, potholed drive, Buffy checked nervously that everything was straight and tucked in. Patted carefully at her hair. Then she lifted her chin and marched up toward the factory that wasn’t as abandoned as it looked. All the windows were blackened and the doors boarded over with plywood that would have looked suspiciously fresh if she hadn’t already known why it hadn’t yet had time to become weathered. Taking her best guess, she veered toward an annex, stomped up to the door and yanked it open, surprising what was almost certainly a vamp sitting at a desk, reading a magazine.  
  
Confronting the woman, Buffy started tightly, “I’m coming in, and I don’t want--”  
  
Rising, the woman had a definite _oh, shit!_ expression. Turning only her head, the she-vamp elbowed open the inner door and shouted, “Emil! Get Spike. Now!”  
  
From inside, a male voice replied, “He said--”  
  
“Slayer’s here!”  
  
Faintly, the voice responded, “Oh, shit.”  
  
Well, that was one way to make an entrance. Buffy stomped past the sentry, through the door. She was looking at a vast dim open space, part of which was set up as a training area with weapons on the wall, pads on the concrete floor. Three vamps in motion there, turning to stare at her like cows watching a passing car. In the other direction, to her right, she saw the back of a big vamp disappearing through a gap in a barricade wall of dead machinery. Figuring that was probably the _oh, shit!_ guy, she followed him, watching in all directions. Any vamp that so much as looked at her crosseyed, she’d put down, hard and fast.  
  
Beyond the barricade, no problem figuring where to go. The whole space was bare, floor to high ceiling, with a bright, glassed-in cubicle freestanding in the middle. The big vamp was leaning in the doorway but he turned and backed off as Buffy approached. Buffy didn’t bother to notice where he went, intent on Spike, standing up behind a computer desk filled with things she didn’t understand.  
  
“’Lo, love. Thought you weren’t coming up here.”  
  
He looked really terrible, Buffy thought. Slow and awkward and used-up. He wasn’t looking exactly at her, only in her general direction--as though his eyes weren’t focusing but he hoped she wouldn’t notice. Which made her feel even more nervous, considering the favor she’d come to ask him.  
  
He was pushing papers off an ugly pink molded plastic chair, to clear it for her. Then he changed his mind and started working at the strewn cushions of a Morris chair, pitching off a pizza box, some beer bottles that clanged on the cement. In the middle of that, he just ran down, bent with his forehead against the top of the back cushion.  
  
“’M fine,” he insisted automatically, when she clasped him around the chest and laid her cheek against the back of his head. “Jus’ come over a bit dizzy, it’ll pass, always does.”  
  
He sounded in the last fading stages of drunk, but she could tell he wasn’t: the smell was wrong. She asked him softly, “Didn’t you get any sleep at all?”  
  
His shoulders hitched. “The odd minute, here and there. Couldn’t. Wasn’t time. An’ by then, might as well come back here, take a run at the translation. Nearly got a piece done. But noplace near caught up, noplace….”  
  
Spotting a cot, she turned away from him to fling off trash until she’d uncovered a pillow and a threadbare blue blanket. She walked him over to it and made him lie down. Not hard, considering he was weaving and unsteady on his feet--in no shape to resist effectively. It took no more than a spread hand on his chest to keep him flat.  
  
He pulled an arm up across his eyes: what he did when he was hiding. “Can’t do this, love. It’s all way behind.”  
  
Buffy paid no attention. He was always cool to the touch. But his lifted arm, when she touched it, felt ice-cold. She pulled the blanket up, then knew that wouldn’t be much help: blankets only kept warmth in. They were no help in generating it in the first place. And from experience she knew cots tended to collapse when asked to support two.  
  
She wanted to get him home. Get him into a really hot shower for awhile, then tumble him into bed. Get him to feed from her: what he needed. What he wouldn’t willingly do anymore. Put it in a cup, then. Not as good, but if he didn’t take it, it would be wasted. That was a lever she hadn’t used yet….  
  
Except it was 3:30 in the afternoon on a bright, sunny day…and the SUV wasn’t sun-proofed and had no trunk.  
  
While she considered, Buffy heard running feet. Straightening, turning, she found Kennedy leaning in at the door, wide-eyed and wary. Chosen, obviously, as the go-between, between a bunch of nervous vamps and the Slayer.  
  
Buffy asked curtly, “Does this place have hot water?”  
  
“For tea, yeah, or--”  
  
“In quantity? Like a shower?”  
  
The SIT shook her head quick, like a shudder. “No. No heater. Buffy, he’s OK. He said--”  
  
“I don’t give a damn what he said. Is there….” Buffy paused, thinking some more. “You said tea. Is there any cocoa?”  
  
“Yeah. Willow brought it, for housewarming.”  
  
Buffy remembered saying to Willow, _How come you know, when I don’t?_ And Willow had replied, with awkward gentleness, _I ask_. Or something along those lines.  
  
Housewarming. Right.  
  
“Fix some, then. Kennedy,” Buffy added, calling the SIT back. “I’m sure there’s something around by way of liquor. Bring that, too.”  
  
“Not a good idea, pet,” Spike slurred, from the cot. “Don’t sit all that well with the pills. I try not to do ‘em both at the same time. Mostly.” Scraping the blanket aside, he pushed to sitting: leaned forward, forearms on thighs, hands loosely clasped, head bent. “’F I knew you were gonna come calling, I’d have straightened up the place. And myself. Sorry. What was it, you were looking for?”  
  
Buffy dragged the ugly chair around, so they were sitting knee to knee. “I tried calling,” she mentioned. “Phone--”  
  
“--was turned off. Yeah. Hard to skulk, pet, with this loud buzzing thing in your pocket. Rather spoils the mood.”  
  
“And after skulking?” Buffy asked pointedly.  
  
His shoulders sagged a little more. “Yeah. Forgot. Didn’t expect you. Said you wouldn’t set foot here. To train, or anything.”  
  
“I lied.”  
  
“Yeah, right.” That got a chuckle.  
  
“I wanted--” Buffy changed her mind. “I want to ask a favor. Notice the hat in hand.”  
  
He was enough out of it that he actually looked. “No hat.”  
  
“Figurative hat.”  
  
“Yeah. Got that now. So what could be so dire to make you fetch your figurative hat up to the Forbidden Fanged Menagerie, then?”  
  
“If it’s something you can do on maybe four hours of sleep. Assuming you get started right away.”  
  
Spike finally lifted his head and shut his eyes. “Get right started. ‘F I don’t die of the suspense. Name it.”  
  
“You remember Principal Doty approved my self-defense class.”  
  
Spike was quiet a moment. “Yeah. Recall you said that. Now that you remind me.”  
  
“The first class is tonight. Eight o’ clock. In the gym. For an hour. Fourteen people have signed up. And I’m supposed to show them exercises when what I want to show them is how to dust vamps. I was OK, mostly, with the SITs. They knew what the score was. But what am I gonna do, facing Ms. Happy Homemaker, Chatty Cheerleader, Nora Nerd, and at least one guy, and babble about the benefits of regular exercise?”  
  
Spike thought some more. “You’re not _scared_ , are you, Slayer?”  
  
“Frickin’ terrified. And I want you there so bad my teeth started aching. It will be fine, if you’re there. Everybody will be looking at you. Nobody looking at me. And we could show them a few simple throws, and make touching your toes look sexy, and nobody there will even know you’re a vamp, and please come, please. I know it’s an imposition, I’m taking advantage, but I don’t care. I can’t face it otherwise. Please.”  
  
Still with his eyes shut, he opened up his hands, and she set hers in them. “Yeah. All right.”  
  
“You don’t have to. I mean, if you just can’t. I can always--”  
  
Buffy’s babbling cut off when Spike opened his eyes and she fell into them.  
  
“You don’t get how it goes, pet. After three ‘pleases,’ you’re not allowed to argue me out of it again. I got your back. Even facing Chatty Cheerleader and her chums. Maybe I could roust out some SITs for the demos. Ken!”  
  
“Yeah, Spike. Coming!” came the reply from out of the dim, big space. A moment later, Kennedy came hustling into view at a flat-footed glide, balancing a very full mug of cocoa. She watched the floor, coming from the door. Holding out the mug, she warned, “Careful. It’s hot, and it’s full.”  
  
The transfer was made. Spike inhaled the steam with apparent rapture. “Ken, get hold of ‘Manda and Rona. What time’s it got to be?”  
  
“You have a watch now, Spike,” responded the SIT, with a small, knowing smile.  
  
“Tell me anyway. Not convenient to look.”  
  
“If you mean, is ‘Manda home from school yet, the answer is probably. Post school, pre tribute delivery.”  
  
“Right then. Get onto them, tell them the mark’s the school gym, eight o’clock. Doin’ demos for Buffy’s new class. Not optional.”  
  
“Me too?”  
  
“You too. New thing. Have to back her up. Lots of flourishes, so nobody notices when I fall down.”  
  
“Ha! Got to see this!” The SIT ran out.  
  
“You know what?” Buffy remarked thoughtfully, looking after her.  
  
“No: what?”  
  
“Sometimes, she’s almost human. I nearly liked her, there for a minute.”  
  
“You can’t have her: you’re taken.”  
  
Buffy felt herself blushing. “Not like _that_ , you idiot!” She almost shoved him but remembered in time about the cocoa. Which, she realized, was already gone: Spike handed over the empty mug, then let himself tip back onto the pillow.  
  
“You see Red and Bit get their suppers all right. You, too, of course. An’ I’ll have a bit of a kip here. Tell Mary, wake me up seven thirty, even if she has to use a cannon. Have a car ready. An’ we’ll all come together at the appointed place.”  
  
Buffy didn’t ask how she’d know Mary from the other vamps. She’d work it out. Some things, she could manage just fine on her own. Just not the really scary ones not involving the supernatural.  
  
When she took his lax hand, she thought it was a little warmer. Less chill. Better, anyway. And she decided she wasn’t gonna push the feeding issue now: he needed the sleep more. She sat, quietly holding his hand, until she was certain he was asleep, which didn’t take very long. Then she kissed him, let go, and steeled herself for the challenge of identifying Mary.  
  
**********  
  
Sitting beside Willow about midway up the otherwise empty indoor bleachers, Dawn leaned a little to grab popcorn from the bag and catch Willow’s explanation of _shadenfreude:_ unholy glee at someone else’s misfortune.  
  
“That’s not French?” Dawn whispered, trying not to spit popcorn. Willow was taking French.  
  
“Nope. German. And universal.”  
  
“Huh.” Trying to keep a straight face, Dawn thought a moment, swallowed the rest of the popcorn, then whispered, “It’s a very vamp concept.”  
  
Willow nodded noncommittally: she was having a hard time keeping a straight face, too. Holding off the giggles by biting her lip and looking anyplace except where Buffy was doing a terrible job of cajoling a dozen or so assorted townies, most of them teenaged, female, and overweight, into doing jumping jacks. About every two minutes, Buffy would forget herself and go all sergeant major on them, single out some slacker and chew her out, as though they were SITs, to the conspicuous non-improvement of either morale or performance. One had already run off, red-faced and crying. Afterward Buffy tried to make it up to the rest with insincere compliments and perky wheedling that didn’t improve things either.  
  
And that was only the newest misfortune.  
  
To start off with, there’d been no lights on in the gym and everybody poking and groping around near the door trying to find the light switch. That was how Dawn had found them, arriving with Willow. When somebody at last located the lighting control panel, cleverly concealed in its shut box on the wall where no sensible person would ever look for it, much less recognize it when they found it, Dawn had winced aside with a protesting whisper of, “My eyes! My eyes!” because the attendees were revealed in all their ragbag day-glo glory. Outfits ranged from extreme denim through unremarkable baggy sweats to shorts and halter tops and, at the pinnacle of bad taste, bulging skin-tight lycra aerobic togs with what appeared to be thongs and bras worn on the outside, in a variety of vomit-inducing colors, all satin-finished and shiny.  
  
Even Buffy had stared and gulped. Then she’d launched abruptly into her opening greeting speech, introducing herself, glaring steadily at the shut doors that led to the corridor as though she’d presently remove them by bodily attack and meanwhile declaring that personal fitness was the necessary first step to self defense, and Dawn had settled onto the bleacher seat with a happy sigh, feeling herself recompensed for every Friday night Slayer State of the First harangue she’d had to suffer through.  
  
Because the attendees weren’t terrified SITs and didn’t have to be polite. Dawn thought a girl’s interrupting, “Can we just get to the sweating part?” was about the best.  
  
The two guys present had plainly come to check out the chicks and couldn’t decide whether to stay in back, with the best view of the ample assets, or to move in front to put their own assets on display. So they wandered tidally, back to front, then back again, doing about five jumping jacks to every one the girls performed, so nobody could get into or maintain a rhythm.  
  
Then the double doors whacked back and Spike and his entourage made their entrance, checking out _everybody’s_ assets. Three flanked out to either side: the three SITs to the left, and Emil, Mary, and Mike on a mirroring diagonal to the right. All in the colors. All doing the slo-mo-looking power walk thing with just the hint of a catch and hang between strides, that really only vamps could do right but the SITs were making a respectable try at imitating, all of them in stride, anyway. And Spike, with controlled energy, grace, and arrogant amusement absolutely crackling off him like rug static, with a slight, speculative smile that was pure predator as he surveyed the attendees as if deciding which was first up on the menu, half a step in front of the others, duster swinging to his stride.  
  
Gazing raptly, Dawn whispered, “I think the one in the puke green, with the outside underwear, is gonna have an aneurysm.”  
  
Willow whispered back, “Redefines making an exhibition of yourself. Long time since I saw that. Not since the chip.”  
  
“Never saw that,” Dawn replied. “Always knew he could if he wanted to, though. Just never wanted to, I guess, when I could see him. So _that’s_ the Big Bad.”  
  
Then they concluded together, “Pills,” and Willow added, “Lots and lots of pills. Hate to think of the crash.”  
  
“Worth it,” Dawn decided. “At least, _he_ won’t get a heart attack.”  
  
Perversely she was a little peeved that Mike paid her not the least attention. Sure, she was still furiousfuckingmad at him for taking pot-shots at Spike as a rough vamp prank, and sure, she still wasn’t speaking to him. That didn’t alter her disappointed surprise at being ignored altogether when she positively _knew_ he’d have recognized her smell right away. The gentlemanly thing would have been to show her some sign so she could loftily ignore him.  
  
Then she froze because Spike noticed her. The blazing blue eyes locked a second and a nod acknowledged her. And because Spike had looked, everybody else looked, all the eyes on Dawn, and to her chagrin, she Eeped, swallowed hard, and tried to hide behind Willow.  
  
She hoped Spike hadn’t seen, because he’d halted before Buffy, who had her arms folded and was glaring up at him the way she’d glared at the shut doors.  
  
“You’re late,” Buffy accused.  
  
“Oh, are we? Thought we were right on time.” Gazing around again, he said, “Introduce me to these fine folk, pet.”  
  
Caught flat-footed, Buffy dove for a sheet of printout and began reading names. Spike went and greeted each one as he detected a reaction to the name. But it looked as though hearing the name, he knew at once who it belonged to by some magic of recognition. He took and clasped their hands, even the guys (who were welcome to consider it a handshake if they liked, although Spike did them all exactly the same), then paced back to Buffy, waiting for her to do the honors.  
  
Buffy said, “Everybody, this…is my boyfriend: William.”  
  
Willow made a fizzing noise, choked off almost instantly. And Kennedy twitched.  
  
“Well, thank you Elizabeth Anne, for inviting us,” Spike drawled, lingering over the name. “What’s the first order of the evening? Warm-ups, or go right to the attacks?” He rubbed his hands together briskly, a gesture of anticipation.  
  
Dawn confronted the awful prospect that Spike was gonna _do_ something. In a fey mood with the brakes off and the clutch released, he had a fairly gruesome sense of what was funny. His own personal version of schadenfreude, except he got to cause the misfortune, not just gloat from the sidelines.  
  
Apparently Buffy had the same misgivings because she went up on her toes to whisper something fierce directly into his ear. Spike spread both hands slightly, protesting innocence of any such dire intent. There was a moment of locked glances: Buffy tense and mistrustful, Spike all happy affability. Except for the second his eyes flashed gold, which none of the Desperate Dozen plus behind him could see.  
  
Sort of like a wink, Dawn decided. Except one just short of showing fangs.  
  
First order of the evening was, predictably, exercise. More jumping jacks, the vamps and SITs just like clockwork so the whole of the group actually managed to achieve something like a unanimous rhythm in imitation. Except a pair in the back: standing leaned forward, gaping in forlorn adoration at Spike, who’d lit a cigarette over Buffy’s hissed protests, showing her his boot soles in turn and clearly making the point that the gym-shoes-only rule wasn’t one he was honoring either so why all the fuss about a sodding smoke? (Dawn made out the final phrase by lip-reading.) But he was only being provoking because the next minute, he’d pitched the smoke and stepped on it, then made a bee-line to the yearning pair in back, taking them by the shoulders and walking them away, chatting them up, then giving them private instruction in how jumping jacks were properly done, the three of them off everybody else’s pace, but in gradual synch with each other because Spike patiently kept to a slower rhythm they could match. And they would obviously rather have died now than give up or stop and thereby cease to be the focus of his attention.  
  
Dawn sniped to Willow, “And he claims he can’t do thrall. He’s just mocking them. Making them look even sillier.”  
  
Willow leaned close. “The one on the left. In the stupid pink print. Remind you of anybody?”  
  
Dawn looked, but it was just a chubby, badly-dressed girl, maybe sixteen, in droopy sweats: dark hair flopping as she panted open-mouthed, flinging her arms wildly up and down as she jumped with her feet apart, then together, eyes riveted on Spike. “I don’t--” she began, and then saw it and said softly, “Oh.” Because if the girl were a SIT, she’d have been Kim. And what Dawn had taken for mockery was therefore a kind of wistful courtesy, and sincere. There was more to Spike than snark. She should have known better.  
  
Dawn deducted points from herself because Willow had seen it--the resemblance and what it meant--and she hadn’t.  
  
Dawn asked, “How’s his aura?” In response, Willow’s eyes went unfocused and distant.  
  
“About what you’d expect,” Willow reported calmly, after a minute or two. “Ginormous and blazing white. Putting out energy like a blast furnace.”  
  
“Oh.” Dawn had never been able to make herself see an aura but could imagine them, from Willow’s descriptions, just fine. “So--no sign of magical tampering?”  
  
Willow shook her head, but it wasn’t No. “Can’t make out anything through that. No use trying until he settles. A _lot_.”  
  
They’d gone to the factory in Willow’s second-hand chugging green Fiat, seen the parked SUV, and met Buffy partway up the drive. Buffy had listened to their concerns but forbade their waking Spike for anything short of actual apocalypse, and they’d trailed the SUV obediently home. But over supper, Buffy had explained about the class, and asking Spike to come, so Dawn and Willow had decided to tag along and do the testing afterward. Willow still had the spell components in her bag. The one that didn’t contain popcorn.  
  
After the jumping jacks there were toe touches: first straight down, then fingers to opposite feet, each arm reaching high, then down, in turn. At that point, Buffy decreed everybody sufficiently warm and waved Spike in to enact a mugging scenario. He left the two thoroughly enthralled girls with a small bow and a twinkle, then came sauntering across the floor, shedding his duster and collecting it in a bundle. Bypassing Buffy, he stepped up the tiers of bleachers, six rows in two steps, and held the duster out to Dawn.  
  
“Keep this for me, will you, Bit? Don’t trust one of those yobs not to nick it when I’m not looking, except it’s guarded.”  
  
“Sure, Spike,” Dawn gulped, uncomfortable again to have everybody looking at her. As she gathered the bunched duster into her lap, Spike drew a knuckle down her cheek.  
  
He murmured, “Missed you, Bit.”  
  
“Missed you too, Spike.”  
  
“Red, you havin’ a good time?”  
  
“So far,” Willow agreed. “Want to talk to you awhile, after.”  
  
“That’s all right, then. Ta.”  
  
He wide-stepped back down the tiers of seats, landing on the floor with a bounce. He was in the full mall regalia: the black shiny kidskin pants, studded belt, broad studded watchband, skin-tight black T and scarlet button-down loose over it, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. At a distance, with the duster over it all, Dawn hadn’t been sure. On his left forearm she could see part of the spiraling green tattoo he'd gotten for her: a line of poetry that meant "Dawn."  
  
“So,” he said, and got the first syllable of Slayer out before he caught himself and corrected to, “Elizabeth. Who’s to be the mugger, and who’s the muggee?” Another brisk rubbing of palms.  
  
“I’ll mug you, the poor helpless creature that doesn’t know how to defend himself,” Buffy declared in a tone that suggested she thought he was having entirely too much fun.  
  
Apparently Spike took mugging literally because he made dire faces of fear and dismay when, strolling peaceably, he was accosted by the short pony-tailed blond in white halter top and satin-finished, slinky black slacks and moderate heels, who blocked his way demanding his money or his life. When he attempted to hit her, a slow, telegraphed blow that a crippled grandma would have had no trouble dodging, she grabbed his wrist and flung him over her back. The gym wasn’t padded. Sprawled on the floor, Spike made a horrible fuss, declaring himself ruined for life, refusing to budge until Buffy consented to come give him a hand. Grimacing, she did, and he allowed himself to be pulled up. Dawn had suspected he’d throw Buffy in turn but he didn’t, standing clear and working his shoulders, gentling and bending his back, checking for plainly non-existent damage.  
  
When the giggling and laughter from the audience finally died down, Spike said hopefully, “My turn to be the mugger, pet?”  
  
There was an exchange of suspicious and blandly innocent gazes. Then Buffy said, “Oh, all right. Your turn.”  
  
Buffy became the incautious pedestrian, whistling and kicking away imaginary stones until confronted by the Big Bad, jumping into her way with a loud thud of boots. For the sake of variety, Spike demanded her virtue and proceeded to try to steal a kiss, breaking off in the middle and ignoring Buffy’s feebly slapping hands to explain to the audience, “Kiss mugger. Run into ‘em all the time, where I come from.” Then he reacted as one of Buffy’s hands apparently did something much less feeble. He stood on the toes of her shoes with the toes of his boots and she couldn’t get him off. She smacked him, hands and then elbows, and he smacked her back, leaning in to plant quick, chaste kisses on whatever part of her face he could get at, in between swats. Then she gave him a good one and he went into a back handspring and onto his feet again, pointing to the laughing audience and warning, “Stunt being performed by professional molesters. Do not try this at home.” When charging Buffy spun into a roundhouse kick at his chest, he wasn’t there, clapping and exclaiming, “Oi, good one! That would’ve hurt!”  
  
Then they got into it, at speed. Almost too fast to see. Dawn had seen them spar a few times, and this wasn’t it. This was something else. Every time she caught sight of Spike’s face, he was grinning, generally with his tongue showing. Every time she could see Buffy’s face, it was grim and intent. Most of the time, neither was actually touching the floor.  
  
After a few minutes, Spike called, “These are the paying customers, love: let ‘em see the moves.”  
  
Pausing, Buffy shook her head hard, shaking off the fighting trance, or whatever it’d been. And they began the slo-mo sparring--every blow prolonged, every kick impossibly slow, barely poised on the toe of the other foot; every fall a gymnastic demonstration of how long it could take to actually touch the floor and then fold into a flip or extend into a handstand or cartwheel.  
  
The audience had started in laughter, then fallen silent when things went fast and scary. When Spike consented to take a tumble, every individual joint striking the floor separately, ending in the same unlikely, artistic sprawl as before, the civilians erupted in applause as Buffy scuffed over and assisted him back to his feet, consenting finally to smile and let him drape a casual arm across her shoulders.  
  
Making a winding gesture overhead with his left hand, Spike called, “By pairs. My lot, find yourself a partner, simple wrist throws. You don’t throw them, they throw you. Warn you: this floor is fu-- very _hard_. Not like that fine, bouncy concrete you’re used to. All right, have at it. Ten minutes.” Then he stabbed a finger at each of the two guys, who eyed each other and him nervously. Disengaging from Buffy, Spike said to them, “Come on, nobody’s gonna hurt you here. Fine strong blokes like yourselves, no mugger in his right mind would come at you, right? So a little practice footwork here. See if you can put me down. All good sport.”  
  
Then he proceeded to trip them, over and over, no matter what they did or tried to do. He’d hook a knee or an ankle, from the front, behind, or either side, and dump them again. “Soccer moves,” he explained, and dumped them some more with sudden sweep kicks and scissors clamps, balanced on the palm of one hand, his body parallel to the floor. The few attendees not practicing throws with a vamp or SIT partner were watching and giggling.  
  
When Spike felt he’d frustrated los guys sufficiently, he stopped and started showing them moves. How to hook a heel. How to go after the rear foot, the balance foot unless your opponent was really stupid, and push it aside so the body couldn’t help but fall, losing that key support. The beginnings, Dawn recognized, of the fine and subtle art of _stance_.  
  
She’d seen him drilling the SITs on that.  
  
When Buffy ended the first round of practice by observing each pair and making suggestions, corrections, and adjustments, Spike still instructing in stance by the far wall, was when the vamps burst in.  
  
**********  
  
Immediately Dawn’s taser was in her hand and she was thinking how to get it to somebody who could do more damage with it than she could. Because, no stakes. No weapons of any kind.  
  
But before she could come up with any sort of plan, she heard Spike call, “Here!” and “Bit--Lights!”  
  
And Dawn knew where the lighting box was: directly in front of her, at the other end of the gym. Since the lights were on, that must mean Spike wanted them off. She didn’t try to work out the sense, just sprang to her feet and started running, paying no attention to anything except her footing on the narrow boards. Not even when they reverberated and bounced, warning of someone in pursuit. She’d visualized it in her mind: the instant she reached the wall, she banged the box open and started pushing the switches (or breakers or whatever they were called) efficiently with the side of her hand, clicking them down by rows. The next second, the gym was pitch black.  
  
But not to vamps.  
  
The boards were still bouncing under her. Visualizing the structure of the bleachers, she dropped flat and slipped through the space between rows, wriggled around until she was swinging by her hands, then let herself fall. She had the distance pretty much right: she landed prepared and started retreating, one arm sweeping behind her and the taser in front, intending to put her back against a wall or better, in a corner, to limit the ways a vamp could come at her. But the back of her head banging into a riser told her she’d turned in the drop or the landing and was in fact backing toward the small end of the wedge, the lowest tiers, not toward the wall. Discarding Plan A, she went to Plan B: curl up small and put a good shock into the first touch she felt.  
  
“Dawn,” said a voice right beside her, and she jabbed reflexively. Didn’t make contact, which probably was just as well, because it was Mike. He’d seen the strike coming and dodged.  
  
She blindly offered the taser on a palm. “Here.”  
  
She felt a brief touch on her palm, but the taser wasn’t collected. “Just watching out for you,” Mike murmured. “Wasn’t but six of ‘em. Two, maybe, left. Nothing we can’t handle. You just sit tight. Better, come around behind me.” A hand closed over her arm and guided her, duck-walking, then let go. “I can’t get into a tiny little space like that, like you can. But somebody could reach through, grab.” Something in his voice told her the words were pushed through fangs. Game-faced: a no-brainer, really, in the dark. They all would have shifted aspect immediately, to see.  
  
There’d been a lot of confused, frightened yelling, at first. Now it was so quiet that Dawn caught the distinctive crackle/hiss of a vamp dusting. A moment later, it was repeated.  
  
“Spike,” Mike whispered, “he’s got his garrote. All tidy. Nothing left to see. That the light box, up there on the wall?”  
  
“Yeah,” Dawn whispered back. “But you can’t slide through the risers. Boost me through.”  
  
Although she waited, crouched with her hands gripping the inside of the long bench seat, Mike made no move to touch her until somebody gave a very high-pitched whistle. Then he helped her align herself horizontally and skinny through the gap. She swung her feet around, stood, and groped forward until she found the wall. Patting until she found the lighting box, she reversed all the switches: bang, bang, bang. All the lights were restored.  
  
Blinking in the sudden stark brilliance, Dawn looked at once for Spike and Buffy and found them: Buffy with the SITs in a semicircle, the civilians herded into the corner behind them--relaxing now, breaking the protective formation--and Spike walking toward Buffy at a deliberate pace across the open floor, stowing something away in a pocket. Mary and Emil together near the doors, talking together idly as though nothing at all had happened. Mike appearing from between two assemblages of bleachers and converging with Spike, merely waiting but claiming pride of place at Spike’s right hand as Buffy and Spike exchanged a few words. Nothing but human faces showing now, of course.  
  
The finesse of particular position was also claimable by Willow: still sitting calmly exactly where she’d been, munching popcorn, quite untroubled. Which brought home to Dawn that Willow was now a powerful enough witch that not even a vamp attack constituted a particular threat.  
  
Willow’s taking no action also implicitly stated her confidence in the people on the floor to handle it without her intervention, which struck Dawn as a hair optimistic. But the determining factor was that not a single sign of the intruding vamps remained. All tidy, as Mike had remarked.  
  
Laughing unconvincingly, Buffy was offering the explanation that it was a stupid pre-Halloween prank staged by a few students in masks, trying to frighten them by turning the lights out. Then she offered the more paranoid explanation that certain unspecified persons didn’t want this new class to succeed, and she hoped she’d see them all back on Thursday.  
  
On that note, the attendees grabbed jackets and left, chatting, nobody seeming much alarmed. The two guys at the rear were trying to trip each other up as the doors closed behind them.  
  
Everybody that remained drifted together, most perching on the first and second rows of bleachers--some with legs dangling, some with feet on the bench below and knees tucked up tight. The atmosphere changed, now that the ignorant civilians were gone.  
  
“Well,” said Buffy, leaning wearily back, “to what do we owe that little visitation?”  
  
“Parked cars,” commented Spike, dropping crosslegged onto the floor and lighting a cigarette--this time without anybody objecting. “Lot’s generally empty this time of night. Bunch of cars, and then the building standing open, unlocked. So a few vamps figured they’d come up lucky--meeting or something. Big empty building. Easy feed.” Putting his lighter away, he added, “Not 100% certain but best guess.”  
  
“Not aimed at you,” Buffy interpreted, still half a question.  
  
“Don’t think so, no. Just the usual Sunnydale nightlife on the hunt. Feed and get gone before midnight, before the sweep. Their bad luck that they run into us. Most of them fledges. Hardly a shred of a brain among ‘em. No.”  
  
“Just a fluke,” said Buffy.  
  
“Yeah. I think so,” Spike responded, and Buffy nodded, accepting it.  
  
“Then put it to the test,” she proposed. “Come back Thursday for the next class.”  
  
Spike sighed, hung his head, and didn’t answer. The fight in the dark seemed to have used up all the manic energy and exuberance. Pills wearing off, Dawn thought: exhaustion washing back in fast. Sliding toward an awesome crash.  
  
“Tell you what,” Buffy said. “I’ll offer you a swap. You help me with the class and you can have all the training gear from the Magic Box, that you wanted.” When there was again no response, Buffy added, “ _And_ I’ll come train there. And help train your people. Run them through the drills. We trained the SITs to dust vamps, kill demons, stay alive. As best I can see, that’s what your sweeps are about. No difference. So I’ll help. If you want.”  
  
From the way Buffy’s offer slowed and backed, she was puzzled and disappointed by the lack of rah rah reaction at the concessions she was prepared to make for a repeat of the Buffy-and-Spike show.  
  
Dawn remarked, “I don’t think there’s much rah rah left, Buffy. The show and the fight burned it all off. He’s crashing now.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“Not a real great time for negotiations. Or linear thought. You got all there was.”  
  
“Oh,” Buffy said again blankly.  
  
Willow came stepping down the rows, clasping the bag and Spike’s duster. Declining Dawn’s silent offer to take something, she continued down to the floor and knelt by Spike. She said to him, “Don’t want to do anything unwanted or high-handed, here. There’s a little test I’d like to run. Is that OK?”  
  
Spike was concentrating on stubbing out the cigarette against his boot sole. “Cold,” was his blurred response. He wrapped his arms around himself.  
  
“All right,” Willow muttered, “not a great time for informed consent, either. Spike.” She waited until she got some minimal reaction. “Want to rest?”  
  
“Oh, yes, please.” The voice didn’t sound like Spike at all. Startling. Creepy. As if he was channeling Giles.  
  
Placing a hand on his forehead, Willow said, “ _Sie schlafen,_ ” and Spike toppled over with the duster as a pillow. “Don’t know why German’s best for boring someone senseless, but there it is. One of the lesser mysteries.” Willow looked up at Buffy. “I think it’s time for everybody to go home.”  
  
The SITs left without fuss; the vamps, not so much, until Mike dismissed them. Arms calmly folded, Mike then made wordlessly plain he was staying unless somebody wanted to dispute it with him and probably after, too. Considering Mike’s size, that would have been a major dispute.  
  
“It’s OK,” Dawn told Willow. “Spike wouldn’t mind.” From Willow’s dubious glance and Buffy’s completely ignoring him, Dawn was startled to realize neither of them had the vaguest idea of who Mike was, except another vamp in the colors. He just didn’t register with either of them as a person. Whereas to Dawn, he was completely, unmistakably himself--just as Spike was. Or Mary. Or Huey. Or the little odd guy with all the piercings, whose name she hadn’t been told.  
  
Sue, they might have recognized, she thought…for a minute at least, before the mind-blinds came down.  
  
Mike commented, “Not hunting no trouble. Know he’s safe with you.”  
  
Nobody but Dawn took any notice whatever. She was embarrassed for them and lifted her eyes to his in mute apology.  
  
He came and sat beside her on the bottom bench. Looking straight ahead, he asked, “You talking to me again? Don’t care whether or no. Just want to know where I stand, what I’m s’posed to do.”  
  
“I trusted you with my taser, didn’t I?” Dawn responded crossly.  
  
“Don’t know what that means and didn’t take it anyway.”  
  
“Means I trust you. Doesn’t mean I _like_ you much, but I guess I trust you. So I suppose I’m talking to you, anytime it would be real dumb not to. Like in the middle of a fight.”  
  
“Not in a fight now,” Mike pointed out. “Still talking, sounds like to me.”  
  
Dawn ignored him. But in a personal, specific sort of way. Quite different from what Buffy did.  
  
Mike was breathing. Ostentatiously. Smelling, actually. Back when they were still talking, he’d ride miles just to smell her. Bask in it, claiming no more was needed to be perfectly content. And how fucking freakazoid was that?  
  
Dawn ignored him harder.  
  
While the non-conversation and the non-breathing had been going on, Willow had been earnestly explaining to Buffy about Digger’s sparkly powder and the influence test. Buffy looked appropriately frowny and concerned. She’d settled on the floor, holding Spike’s hand and absently playing with his fingers.  
  
“I’d ask him,” Willow went on, “but now he won’t be awake for at least a day, and he’s turned real hard to catch up with or get hold of.”  
  
“Yeah. I’ve noticed,” Buffy commented dryly. “Really, really noticed.”  
  
“And it’s already been two days. So I don’t think it’s a good idea to wait. I’d do it on your OK. On a scale of risky, it’s about a minus three. Not even the juice of a locator spell. Still kind of nosy, though, so consent is required. Somebody’s. Not really apt to ask Angel. Nor Dru, may she already be dust. So that leaves you.”  
  
Immediate family. Next of kin.  
  
“Yeah,” Buffy responded, very softly. Then she looked around. “Dawnie, you have any problem with it?”  
  
Dawn colored, surprised and uber-pleased to be consulted. “My idea in the first place.”  
  
“Then fire away,” said Buffy. “We seem to have a quorum.” Fondly, she ruffled Spike’s hair, adding, “One abstaining.”  
  
Nobody consulted Mike. As was right. Mike had no say. He didn’t seem to mind, just watching placidly. And breathing, of course.  
  
Willow laid out the spell components with her usual meticulous fussiness. Most, ground to powder, she poured out of a zip bag into a small stone bowl with indecipherable symbols carved around the outside. Adding a thick, glurping liquid from a squeeze bottle, Willow stirred the mixture vigorously with the point-end of a feather. Then she dipped the feather end, using it to dab the runny paste onto Spike’s wrists and throat.  
  
“Pulse points?” Dawn asked.  
  
Willow shrugged. “Like I’ve said before, there’s almost no magic designed for vamps. And mostly it doesn’t work. This may not, either. I’ve made what adaptations on the fly I could. So I may get a false negative. But I don’t think there’s any chance whatever of a false positive.” She dabbed Spike’s forehead and, with a soft “S’cuse me, Spike,” opened the scarlet overshirt and pulled up the black T to add a final splotch over his heart. Setting the soppy feather back in the bowl, Willow looked up. “It’s not required for the spell, but there’s always extra mojo for any sort of Earth magic in threes. So maybe if we held hands…?”  
  
Buffy offered her hands, but Dawn didn’t, her fingers knotting together. “What…if one of the three isn’t…precisely human?”  
  
“Oh, right: the scary blood magic, that went all wildfire. Good catch, Dawnie. I’d almost forgotten that. Better not, then.” Holding spread fingers over Spike’s forehead and heart, not quite touching, Willow began muttering. Once, she winced, commented, “Later,” and went on.  
  
Spike greyed out. A foggy haze rose slowly from him and enclosed him. It gradually turned black and opaque. It tried to climb up Willow’s arms but she shooed it off with a couple of snapped words. As if angered, it curdled--thick, heavy, and roiling--then dissipated with a sudden flash and pop.  
  
Willow pulled her arms in, rubbing them as if she’d been stung.  
  
Buffy started patting Spike all over--reflexively checking for damage. “I think I speak for us all when I say ‘What in hell?’”  
  
Wringing her hands, Willow commented, “No false positive there, no siree!”  
  
“What is it?” Dawn asked anxiously.  
  
“No clue, except it obviously wasn’t intended for his well-being. The next step is an intimate tête à tête with our skanky but stylish rat witch, Amy Madison.”


	3. Contacts

“So they didn’t get him?” Digger asked, looking up from lighting his pipe.  
  
Mike shook his head.  
  
“Incompetent fuckers!”  
  
“Fledges.” Mike shrugged, emptied his glass, and set it back on the table. Wasn’t a hint: he knew Digger would refill it when the old vamp poured another for himself.  
  
Digger wasn’t obvious about such things.  
  
Digger could outdrink him and would send him home incapable, with an escort, as often as Mike was willing to accept Digger’s calculated hospitality. Which he did, two or three times a week. Unless he passed out, of course, and by default accepted the further hospitality of one of Digger’s many beds. With Digger for company. Sometimes Star, too.  
  
Mike added, “If they’d held off another ten minutes, would’ve been a different story: would’ve found him passed out cold on the floor and nothing between them and the food but the Slayer.”  
  
Digger chuckled, puffing smoke. “Drunk, was he?”  
  
“No. Just trying to push himself past what he could do. Slayer calls ‘frog,’ he’ll hop or bust himself trying. He loses that patronage, it all comes down. So I’m running the sweep tonight. His people and a couple of mine, test ‘em out. He’d expect that.”  
  
That was one of the reasons Mike had swung by Digger’s lair--to tell him that before the fact instead of learning about it later, as he surely would. Digger would rather the sweep be abandoned on account of Spike not being able to stretch himself that far. Have that part of the new ways falling down when it was barely begun.  
  
“That’s right, boy,” Digger surprised him by saying, refilling both glasses. “Get him to depend on you, then pick a good time and let it come down smash.”  
  
“I expect.”  
  
“Get him to hunt with you. Nothing makes a couple of vamps easy with one another like sharing a kill. Except maybe sharing a bed!”  
  
“Leave off,” Mike said without heat, batting away Digger’s hand. “Not goin’ out there stinking of you, you putrid old coyote.” He sipped his drink, shut his eyes while it went down. “I’ve asked. He’s never taken me up on it. Always ‘Some other time.’”  
  
“Thinks he’s too good for you.”  
  
Mike opened his eyes, gave Digger a stare. “He _is_ too good for me. Gave me a district, named me his get and his ‘Favored Childe’ in front of God and everybody. Told you, not gonna cross him, Digger, till I got my own patch locked down tight, till I can last out the disruption on my own. Hold onto what I got.”  
  
“You know I’d see you through any bad times. Like I always done.”  
  
Mike looked lazily around the big earth-walled room and its rickety, mostly hand-made furnishings. “Yeah, you and your four soldiers, dozen minions, half dozen raw fledges. That’d be such a help.”  
  
“Building back, boy: building back. Sometimes you win, sometimes the bear wins. Ain’t forgot who sided, last time, with the bear.”  
  
Mike shrugged. “Wasn’t hard to see who was gonna come out on top. Real dumb, Digger, yanking that child for a pax bond, no dickering or agreement beforehand, when she’s his particular pet.”  
  
“Child? Pet? He’d marked her!”  
  
“Doesn’t signify, except to get him mad. Mad, he’s worse than a bear: come through a wall, come through fire to get at you, and you didn’t have anything like the troops there to even slow him down. You’re damn lucky I could talk him out of leaving you in an ashtray. And look what it got me in return. A territory and a name: Michael of Aurelius. You played it dumb, Digger. I played it smart.”  
  
“Sure, sure, he _gives_ you things. Gives you the chance to face off against those damn Turok-han, may they all rot forever in whatever hell they gone back to. Gave you a beat-up old motor-whatsis--"  
  
“Motorcycle, and she runs fine, and I ride while he walks.”  
  
“Don’t care if he goddam crawls, and won’t that be fine to see,” said Digger with a wolfish smile, and took a drink. Then he scowled again. “Named you to a territory, gave you a name you don’t rightly own, and don’t think I don’t know what a load of horse shit _that_ is ‘cause he ain’t never sired nobody except those few when he was drunk or something, and then turned around and hunted all of ‘em down again. Too fucking _nice_ to raise up food as an equal or see to a fledge like it should be done, raise ‘em up right!”  
  
Mike spat on the floor. It was an old rant. He’d heard it lots of times. Didn’t interest him. He wasn’t yet old enough to interrupt a kill, rein in his demon to that extent. No felt pleasure in stopping, feeding himself back to near-dead prey. He accepted that it happened but couldn’t understand, with true body understanding, why a vamp would bother or want to, except for expediency, extra hands for the work or the fighting.  
  
Digger went on, “Gives you all manner of toys and gimcracks: everything except the only one that matters: himself!”  
  
“I’ve had his blood,” Mike mentioned mildly. He didn’t add that Spike had also had his because except for Dawn’s blood mixed in, that wouldn’t work. And now that Dawn bore no living vamp’s mark, she likely wouldn’t let Mike feed from her anymore, to mark her fresh. He’d lost that claim, that connection. It was a sadness to him. And a confusion.  
  
“You had that, and more, from me,” Digger shot back, his lined, froggy face somewhere between a scowl and a pout.  
  
Mike held up his glass. “And very fine it was, too.”  
  
Digger slapped the glass out of his hand. Mike shoved out of his chair, out of reach, pointing, declaring, “Told you, ain’t gonna carry your stink on me all night. Stink up Star, if you’re that desperate. Told you: not gonna lose that patronage.”  
  
“While it lasts.”  
  
“Yeah: while it lasts. And your little schemes around the edges ain’t gonna affect things one way or the other, you pitiful old fart.”  
  
Digger smiled like a shark. Like he knew something Mike didn't. “You’d best be gone then if you’re gonna manage that sweep.”  
  
“Plenty of time. Got the bike,” said Mike, and headed out through the tunnel handiest to where he’d left it.  
  
He never asked Digger directly about his schemes. Just stay skeptical, keep assuming none of it could amount to anything, and eventually Digger would start bragging to prove him wrong. Mike only hoped that it would be ahead of time, to give him a chance to decide what to do about it. Decide what he wanted to do about it.  
  
Digger’s lair was an extensive warren running miles, in three dimensions. Mostly under some tract housing but also back into the hills that were Sunnydale’s southern boundary, the founding site. Digger had been excavating and extending the passages, shoring them up with timber, for well over a century. Originally a silver mine, by Digger’s account. Now long forgotten and appearing on no maps except in the minds of those who’d learned their ways. Nobody knew all their ways except Digger himself. No finer interlace of caverns, shafts, and reinforced passages in town except those that had radiated from the hub of the Hellmouth. And they were now mostly collapsed and dead-ended.  
  
So in one way of thinking, Digger had the finest territory to be had: made by and for vampires, with long sheer drops and climbs no human could negotiate without dragging in a whole lot of gear; tunnels near the central chambers that could be collapsed with an inhumanly strong tug on a rope; multiple exits where no sunlight could intrude. No invasion or pursuit would ever find Digger in this maze, or corner him in it.  
  
No electricity. Just the occasional lantern or candle. No heat. Never warm here. Nothing clean or wholly dry. No books or television or music, which anyplace Spike settled into for even a day had to have for him to consider it minimally habitable. And now the computer, up at the factory, that Spike was half blind from, most days, staring at, and the continual headaches Spike still refused to connect or blame on it. Working for pay. Not even tangible money but numbers on a screen. Theoretical money. From the Watchers Council that was behind the Slayer--the ultimate and absolute enemy of all vampires. Not hunting anymore. Instead, having dead, cold blood delivered twice a day and joylessly feeding--again, from the Council. Pacing the same dull round like a tiger at the zoo.  
  
Though Mike found it disturbing, he understood it well enough: it was the price of Spike’s partnership with the Slayer: there was nothing Spike wouldn’t do to preserve that. And old though he was, Spike had a hankering for the new things. Anything that kept the boredom at bay.  
  
Spike took real and obvious satisfaction in being a vampire. But he still wanted what he wanted, even when those things were incompatible with the needs and limits of being a vamp. Wanted Buffy, wanted to fuck her and fight her, feed on her and mark her (which was all fine) but also wanted her content with it. Trying to give, when all that was natural for a vamp was to take, use up, move on. Not try to stay, keep…. Wanted Dawn, but only her company: hoarding that jealously, but taking nothing else of her nor allowing anybody else to have it neither. Wanted Willow’s friendship and the support of her power but didn’t turn her, which would have given him control, and her obedience, besides. Instead, he left her free to turn on him anytime she took the notion.  
  
Mike didn’t think that would go well for him in the end.  
  
It was, he’d come to think, as if Spike wanted the sun. Digger was content with the dark and would likely be mooching around this old dirty warren long after the rest of them were dust, with their alien dreams and hungers.  
  
Mike wasn’t sure what he wanted but he was prepared to wait and find out.  
  
He lifted his head, catching a smell. Different, but he still knew it. He said favorlessly, “Hi, Sue.”  
  
The fledge came out of a cross-passage. She was dirty, muddy, wiping broken-nailed hands on her hips. “Look,” she said, “you know where I can get a shower? A bath? Anything?”  
  
“Shoring up passages is dirty work,” Mike commented neutrally.  
  
“I’m so sick of being dirty! Do you have a shower at your place?”  
  
Well, that wasn’t subtle. “You allowed out?” Mike asked, knowing she wasn’t.  
  
Mike knew Digger’s rules, having been a fledge here himself. Taken in for his broad back and his willingness to accept orders, but given a place to be, something reliable in all the confusion after he’d risen, alone and terrified and deep in his demon’s bloodthirst, as most fledges did. He still owed Digger for that.  
  
Sue twisted a bare foot in the dirt. “I could if I was under you. Instead of Digger.”  
  
“Not gonna happen.”  
  
“Spike!” Sue spat venomously.  
  
“Not just that. Wouldn’t have taken you on anyway. Got too much to do, working up a new territory, to bother about a fledge.”  
  
Her game face was uglier than most. He didn’t tell her so. Only make her feel worse, she couldn’t help it. And she might flash out at him, and he didn’t have the time or the inclination to hammer her down the way pushy, uncontrolled fledges needed.  
  
Mike continued down the passage. Sue trailed along like an importunate pup. Mike said, “You’re lucky to have any place at all. Get used to it. Get to where you can shed game face ten minutes at a time, Digger will let you go out. Still lots of abandoned houses: likely you could find one with a shower.” Reluctantly, not sure it was a good idea, he added, “There’s water at Casa Mike. You could use that, if you want. No matter to me, I don’t lair up there anymore.”  
  
She looked up with human features and a sad/angry expression. “Can’t. Spike told me I couldn’t go within five blocks of Casa Summers.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “Ten minutes--that’s what Spike said.”  
  
“The usual thing. You’d best get back to your work crew before you’re missed. And punished.”  
  
With a harsh laugh, she dragged up a sleeve, displaying bruises. “Yeah, punished,” she said scornfully.  
  
She considered a few bruises as punishment. Well, no point telling her. She’d find out.  
  
Sue complained, “I’m supposed to be a spy. But nobody’s contacted me! Unless…. Are you my contact?”  
  
Mike belted her then, knocked her back into the wall. She rebounded, fell onto her knees. Mike said sternly, “Don’t know what arrangement you got going with Spike. Don’t want to know. And if you had an ounce of brains, you wouldn’t talk about it--ever. Don’t you know how far vamps can hear? Idiot.”  
  
Slowly standing, again game-faced, sullen, she said, “How am I supposed…to do _that_ when nobody tells me anything?”  
  
“You figure anybody’s gonna trust you with a secret? When you blab out whatever comes into your head? You listen. Watch. Figure out until you can make some sense of what’s going on.” _Like I do_ , he added, in his mind. “Then, maybe, you’ll be worth something. Long as you’re bleating, you’re not listening. Now get back to where you’re s’posed to be.”  
  
He gave her a shove and continued on, to get to where the bike was parked, thinking maybe when she’d developed decent control, he’d take her out: to the Bronze, and then hunting.  
  
She’d never been his favorite among the SITs--that was Amanda--but things were different now, and being around somebody known and familiar had its appeal. Somebody he could actually talk to, be at ease with. Missed that, since Dawn had pulled away, shut him out. Might not be bad. A change, anyway.  
  
**********  
  
Buffy had known it was a risk to put Spike in her own bed to have out his forced sleep. Last Sunday, after a similar long sleep, he’d come awake and then gone totally berserk, rendering Willow’s bedroom down to flinders and scraps. Willow was still grumbling, even though all the furniture had been Buffy’s.  
  
But in the gym, she’d seen what she wanted: what she’d been frustrated, lonely, and desperate without. That muggers pretense could easily have turned into something X-rated, right there on the gym floor in front of everybody, and she’d hit him _hard_ when he’d flashed his eyes at her and grinned, well aware of what she was going through. And then his eyes had changed a different way, wide and wanting…and then the fledges had burst in.  
  
Damn. Double and triple damn.  
  
So she’d made sure that when he woke, he’d be right where she wanted him: in her bed. With no goddam agenda, nothing to distract.  
  
She’d tried to think of everything. She’d spent the morning putting lamps and other breakables in boxes and storing them safe in the hall closet. She had the morning’s cooler of bagged blood handy at the side of the bed because it was minimally a day and maybe two since he’d fed: he’d be hungry that way, too. And she’d pottered around all day unshowered because, however eww to her, that was a turn-on to him--the concentrated smell of her. Wearing a tatty bathrobe she didn’t care about…and nothing underneath. Her hair loose, the way he liked it. Aching with pent-up passion and he’d know that too because he always did.  
  
She felt a little weird, setting up a knock-about, anything goes, grope and shag session in cold blood. But then she’d look at him and be certain he was as starved for her as she was for him, and go lay her heated face against his cool cheek, give him a hopeful kiss, then shiver and retreat, hugging herself, when he didn’t stir. Blood not so cold, after all. Then she’d find some other way to make the time pass.  
  
Finally in mid-afternoon she ran out of patience and didn’t retreat. Almost twenty hours should be enough for anybody, right? Dropping the robe, she pushed back the covers and began petting him. When he did it, he called it “starting without her”: she’d sometimes wake with him already inside her and moving, his eyes gone dark and blank and intent, as they did at such times. And she’d smack him and he’d give her one of those slow, sunrise smiles, all happy at her waking, with the least edge of mischief to have surprised her, and usually she would have been dreaming it, aroused by his attentions, so to wake and find it real was even more wonderful and she’d forgive him his mischief and just let the gladness pour in.  
  
 _My turn_ , she thought, _to surprise him._  
  
It took longer than usual to get him hard and intermittently breathing: must be _real_ deep down. Sliding onto the bed to straddle him, she nipped and pinched and tickled, seeking out his most sensitive spots. Though she got some twitches and deeper responses, he still didn’t wake. (Don’t, don’t, don’t think about fucking a dead body. That’s a whole ‘nother thing, and don’t think about it!) As a last resort she fumbled in the cool-carrier for a bag, opened a corner with the nail scissors she’d put handy on the bedside cabinet, and attempted to feed it to him.  
  
She didn’t expect the bag’s seal to give way, dumping its entire contents. She didn’t expect him to come up in roaring, bloody game-face, drawn like a magnet to the mark and biting down _hard_ , tumbling her over backward and driving into her convulsively. Suddenly being ferociously taken was a detonation in her mind and body. Everything seized up, whited out in astonished sensation. She spasmed, aimlessly flailing, wholly caught up in being simultaneously drained and explosively filled. Everything violent and immediate gradually went floaty and faded.  
  
And she was gone.  
  
**********  
  
Willow had prepared carefully for her meeting with Amy. She’d reviewed a few familiar short spells--she could hold only so many ready in her mind, and the longer ones were no good: she’d be flamed or immobilized before she could finish--but mostly she’d put in some serious time considering how she felt about Amy. Because Amy was a power junkie, just as Willow was. Amy also liked the “my will be done” kind of spells for the rush of safety/control, even if it was illusory and ended up making everything worse, with a side order of guilt cookies coming right up.  
  
Amy had introduced Willow to the wonderful world of direct power drains: every square millimeter of skin tingling with it, barely able to contain it, flashing out with it on the smallest whim because there was always more. And no possible retaliation except for her own eventual disgust, fear, and remorse. Which for months, until her blow-up after Tara’s death, hadn’t been enough to keep Willow from going back to it, having that wonderful feeling again.  
  
Amy owned magic. Amy _was_ magic. And Willow found that perilously appealing.  
  
That was one of the reasons she’d made arrangements to pick Dawn up after school and bring her along.  
  
“You’re a conduit,” she told Dawn, wrenching the old Fiat around a corner. With magic, or even power steering, she could have maneuvered the car more smoothly. But she’d deliberately chosen a manual shift car without assisted anything to make herself remember. To make her deliberate and careful. “If she whips out something I can’t handle right away, I can draw on you to resist, counter-attack.”  
  
“I don’t know, Willow.” Dawn sat hugging herself in her red cardigan, over her school clothes, looking straight ahead. “The last time I went along with you on something like this, I got my arm broken.”  
  
“You won’t get hurt,” Willow assured her for about the sixth time. “I have much better control now: all that time with the coven. Breathing exercises, floating a pencil or spinning a ball for hours until I was totally sick of it. Learning all the therapeutic herbs. I’m humble: I know I need the back-up, can’t do everything on my own just because I want to. And if she’s the one who’s been bombarding Spike with malign spells, I have to find out what they are before I can do anything about them!”  
  
“Yeah, all right,” Dawn responded without enthusiasm. “I said I would. I don’t have to like it too. Can I get a sandwich after? Buffy forgot to pack my lunch.”  
  
“Yeah, sure, sweetie,” Willow agreed abstractedly.  
  
“All I had was potato chips and some extremely vanilla yogurt. Blecch!”  
  
In the pause after shifting gears to stop at a red light, Willow held out a hand. “Give me your locket.”  
  
Looking around with her face screwed up indignantly, Dawn clutched the necklace defensively. “No!”  
  
“It’s only for an hour or so,” Willow argued. “If you’re wearing it, I can’t draw on you. And that’s the whole idea here.”  
  
“Not _my_ whole idea. So, fine, if I’m not a key, I’m a battery. But I’m not giving up my locket: that would leave me open to an-y-thing!”  
  
Willow needed her hand to run through the gears again as the light turned green. “How’s Spike doing?” she asked, dragging the car around another corner.  
  
“How should I know? I’ve been at school all day.”  
  
“I just thought you might have called,” said Willow, fiercely enforcing patience on herself, keeping her tone mild and level.  
  
They both knew Buffy had taken a sick day to stay home with Spike. Who was almost certainly still asleep but might get rowdy when he woke, finding he’d lost a whole day. _Fine_ , Willow thought rancorously: _let him wreck her bedroom this time! Her turn to do penance for having a vampire boyfriend!_  
  
Then she muttered a mantra that was supposed to enhance calm and serenity. She could see the white clapboarded side of Amy’s house ahead. Pulling up against the curb, she set the hand brake but left the engine running. She was really, really tempted to erase Dawn’s reluctance, enforce her cooperation, with a Bidding; but she couldn’t have, even if she wanted to. Not as long as Dawn had the locket containing the most powerful influence-deflecting talisman Willow had been able to devise. Not enough to completely shunt aside a really powerful spell designed and tuned to Dawn’s own nature, as the deathwish had been tuned to Spike, latching onto his weaknesses and uncertainties and launching itself from that secured beachhead. But the talisman was enough to hold even such a spell at bay, unable to inflict its full effect, long enough for an equally focused counterspell to be assembled and set running to dissipate the attack.  
  
Willow had one like it. So did Buffy. And a few others Spike had thought in need of such protection.  
  
 _Hold me harmless of all hurt,_ Willow recited in her mind, grimly determined to be calm. _Hold me in the Light, to do what is in accordance with the Earth, and the Goddess, and all benevolent Powers._  
  
“Dawn, I’ve told you, promised you, that you won’t get hurt here. I’m trying to do what you asked: find out who’s been getting at Spike, with what, and why. But if you won’t give me the locket, there’s no point. If Giles were still here, I could draw on him. But he isn’t. Potentially, you’re an even better reservoir than he was, because of your residual keyness. But if you won’t let me tap into it, it might as well not be there.”  
  
“Isn’t there another way?” Dawn asked in a small voice. “Can’t you scry him some way, find out--”  
  
“No, baby. I can tell that it’s there, but not what it is or how it’s affecting him. It’s been absorbed: it’s part of him now. I can’t disentangle it until I know what it is. How it was made. It’s a custom job: not something I can just go look up in a book. But if you’re that scared, I’ll just take you home and try to think of another--”  
  
“What about Halloween?” Dawn interrupted, sounding rather desperate. “Isn’t there power in that, you could draw from?”  
  
“Not for me,” Willow answered grimly. “It will be around, all right. Samhain: the Sabbat night. Feast of All Souls. You’re right: it has power. But nothing I would dare touch. Whatever’s done has to be done before sundown.”  
  
Willow found herself thinking, _If Tara was here, she would have lent me her power._ Which just started her thinking about Tara, which was still so painful, in so many ways, it made her want to throw her head back and scream.  
  
“Or Anya,” Dawn blurted. “If Amy’s the one who’s hurt Spike, couldn’t he do a wish against her? _Make_ her tell?”  
  
Willow pulled her thoughts away from the sucking black hole that was Tara’s absence. “Vengeance wishes tend to yield torn viscera, not information. And I don’t know if Anya’s Vengeance Demon status is on or off at the moment. Do you?”  
  
Dawn shook her head, flinging hair. “I owed her a wish, but she used that,” she muttered. “I don’t have any other…. I’m sorry, Willow. I didn’t realize it would mean taking the locket off. I’m still connected to the Powers, except the locket keeps them out of my head. Keeps them from knowing whatever I know. And some things I know…are none of their business.”  
  
“Like where Spike’s soul is,” Willow suggested, and Dawn bobbed a tight nod.  
  
“If I took it off…I don’t know what would happen. What they’d do. They really, really don’t like being shut out. I think. I don’t know. I don’t want to find out.” Dawn’s fingers plucked at the air as though trying to grasp alternatives. “Maybe…maybe we should just go home. Phone Giles, we could do that! Maybe he’d have some different idea? Don’t you think?”  
  
“Maybe,” Willow responded without interest, releasing the parking brake, grimly working the gear shift and the clutch, then hauling at the wheel, to pull away from the curb.  
  
Consulting Giles, long distance, on handling Amy the Rat had less than no appeal. All Willow knew was that the confrontation with her once-friend had been derailed, averted. She couldn’t easily decide if she was more disappointed or relieved.  
  
**********  
  
Buffy blinked. Her head felt like a dizzy pumpkin balanced on a straw. Her mouth was dry and tasted foul. Then she remembered, jerked, and shoved herself to sitting, seized with the fear that she was too late, that Spike would have freaked and broken out a window and the sunlight and….  
  
And he was sitting on the floor, finishing off a blood bag. Naked. Face and chest covered in blood. The stuff that had erupted from the bag, probably. Mostly. Still in game-face. And she…was on the floor. Just sprawled, limbs leaden. Not even a pillow.  
  
Glancing around, Spike remarked affably, “Made a proper mess of me, didn’t you? And yourself. And the bed. Fifteen sorts of sticky.” Dropping the empty wrapper, he collected a fresh bag and bit into it, his throat working as he swallowed it down.  
  
Buffy blinked some more, trying to make sense of what had just happened.  
  
He’d bitten her. Soulless, and he’d still bitten her. Damn near drained her. And fucked her while he was doing it. She’d passed out. And then…he’d calmly pulled away, leaned around, and pitched into the contents of the cool box.  
  
She felt a shaking inside as her heart tried to speed up, pump what wasn’t there. The dizziness got worse and fog began to gather at the periphery of her vision. Maybe it was a good idea to lie flat. Staring blankly at the ceiling, she tried to relax, control the shaking. Not black out.  
  
Spike slid in next to her, leaning on an elbow, nuzzling at her neck. “Ready for another go, are you?” he purred into her ear.  
  
She couldn’t find the breath or the words to say No. It was taking all her concentration to keep the fog at bay. And he didn’t notice. Or didn’t care. Was quite ready to start without her, indifferent to her lack of response. Was kissing her, tasting her, with that blood-fouled mouth. And she couldn’t move, couldn’t….  
  
“Pet? Buffy? Something wrong?”  
  
She found herself drawing in a really huge, huge breath. Until her lungs and her chest ached with it, until she felt as if she’d burst. “ _Get away! From me!_ ”  
  
Her arm swung randomly, forcelessly, and bounced off him somewhere. She breathed a second, recovering from the effort, then swung again. This time met nothing. The motion flopped her over onto her side. She lay panting. Heat flashed through her, followed by cold achiness, as her body tried to recover.  
  
He’d always been more afraid of this than she had. Because he’d known it could happen. Now it had. And she supposed it meant something, that in the full intoxication of bloodthirst, he’d still stopped and left her alive. Something…but not much. Not enough.  
  
She rolled her head enough to see, and he’d backed off, obedient to her command. Looking at her. Concerned. Perplexed, she thought. Though it was hard to tell under the blood mask. She shut her eyes as the deep shuddering got stronger.  
  
“Spike: shower. _Hot!_ ”  
  
She couldn’t have stood, much less made it to the bathroom on her own. But that was all right because he gathered her up and carried her. She could still depend on him for things like that.  
  
Still held in the shower, she tipped her head back and opened her mouth to let the water run in. It seemed forever before the blood taste was washed away and another forever before she'd swallowed enough to appease her thirst. Eventually the water’s heat banished the chill, and she felt herself break into a full-body sweat the water washed away. Slayer healing going into high gear to repair the damage, replace the lack. She didn’t know how long he held her like that, cradled passively against his chest, except it wasn’t an hour: the hot water would have run out. Long enough for her fingers to go pruny, though. She studied them in vague bewilderment as he put her down on the toilet to get her dry. Then he wrapped the towel around her shoulders and continued to sit on his heels before her. Knees all knobby. Head bent, not looking at her. Waiting for her verdict.  
  
He’d been thinking too.  
  
“Dressed,” Buffy decided: she couldn’t face that sodden, sticky bed. Couldn’t stand remembering the smell.  
  
He thought a minute, then left, shutting the door behind him. The room was warm with steam, and the towel was large, soft, and comforting. When he came back, he was wearing an old pair of jeans and had brought clothes for her, so she wouldn’t have to go back into the bedroom for them. Silently, he helped her dress, then assisted her downstairs to the front room. When she was settled in the big chair, she said, “We have to talk.”  
  
Spike shook his head and left without replying, turning kitchenward at the hall. With only time to go and come, he returned with a mug of warm onion soup in one hand and a glass of cooking sherry in the other. He set both on the weapons chest beside her.  
  
“Oh, I couldn’t--”  
  
“Drink the soup. You need the salt,” he said curtly, turning away.  
  
He must have opened the can and started the soup heating before he’d brought her clothes. And the cooking sherry because, well, he couldn’t find anything else.  
  
Lifting the mug carefully in both hands, Buffy took a tentative sip and then gulped until the soup was gone. He was right: she was desperately hungry for salt. Well, he should know. The sherry was faintly salty, too. She felt better when she’d finished it.  
  
Sitting on the floor, he reached up a bare, hard ivory arm for the empty mug: he’d lit a cigarette and wanted somewhere other than the floor to tap the ashes. Buffy seized his wrist a moment, then let go, let him take the mug. Cigarettes were forbidden anywhere except in the basement. He wasn’t going to the basement and really needed the cigarette. Nothing there to be discussed.  
  
“You put up,” Buffy said softly, “and put up, and put up. And then you explode.”  
  
“Yeah. Seems like.”  
  
He looked so grim and forlorn. Buffy patted the front of the chair. “C’mere.”  
  
A pause while he thought about it. Then he slid himself so his back was between her knees, facing away from her. Maybe it would be easier to talk and not see each other’s faces. She began working on the muscles of his shoulders and the back of his neck, under the damp ends of his hair. Everything predictably rigid, bunched up.  
  
She said, “No apologies?”  
  
“It’s way past sorry this time. Tried to keep it all clear of you. Didn’t work very well.”  
  
“You have to put the soul back.”  
  
He bent his head. “Can’t.”  
  
“We can’t go on this way.”  
  
“Yeah. Well, then.” He pulled away, stood. Blue eyes blank, face expressionless. “Marked Bit. And now this. Can’t be doing things like this, love. Best let you both be, then. Till this is over.”  
  
“No!”  
  
He made a sudden, aimless gesture with the mug. “Got no goddamn fucking choice! You know what I am. You want--” Breaking off, he hauled open the weapons chest, heedless of the sherry glass smashing against the wall, and came up with a stake he forced her to close her hand around. Bent over her, arms braced to either side, he said, “You want to stake me, go ahead. Be done with it. What the hell am I supposed--”  
  
Wrenching her hand free, Buffy grabbed his neck and pulled his head down into a frantic series of gnawing kisses. When she had to stop to gulp air, he yanked himself away, took two wandering steps, and dropped down on the floor again. Back bowed, head bent: all folded into himself. When the chair creaked, he said, “Don’t. You wouldn’t like…what would come of it. ‘M right on the edge--” She could see his back move with breathing. “It didn’t. Feel wrong. Felt all sorts of good.” He shuddered: maybe a head-shake. “Always…feels all sorts of good. Can’t take care with you anymore. Not without I think it all out beforehand, can’t….”  
  
She waited, but he didn’t finish the thought. “You have to put the soul back.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“I’ll find out where it is and do it--”  
  
“No!”  
  
Noise at the front door. Willow and Dawn came in, arguing, then stopped in the doorway, staring.  
  
Dawn said, “Are you two having a thing? Because if you are, I don’t--”  
  
“Bit,” Spike interrupted, unfolding to stand. “Get the soul.”  
  
“You mean--?”  
  
“Get it.”  
  
Dawn stared to be sure he meant it, then dropped her backpack and hustled away down the hall.  
  
Willow asked, “What’s going on? Did your room get wrecked?”  
  
Buffy and Spike both ignored her.  
  
Thumps and bumps from the basement. Then Dawn returned with a different backpack, holding it carefully before her.  
  
Saying anxiously, “I’ll have to refresh on the ritual,” Willow reached for the backpack but Dawn avoided her, continuing past to present the backpack to Spike. When he didn’t take it, she set it on top of the TV and unzipped it, removing from it an Orb of Thessula glowing with its contents. Scooping it one-handed, Spike hurled it against the nearest wall. He’d flashed into game-face. He glared at Buffy for a moment, then turned on Willow, who looked startled and appalled, leveling a finger at her.  
  
“You try to undo that, Red, and I’ll finish what I started in your bedroom.”  
  
“Is it back?” Buffy asked.  
  
“No,” said Willow, “it’s gone.”  
  
“I guess,” Dawn said shakily, “that means we can visit Amy after all.”  
  
**********  
  
Dawn pinched herself and said softly, “Ow.” She guessed that meant she was still here.  
  
It also apparently meant Spike’s soul wasn’t _gone_ gone: not like he’d dusted or anything. No longer contained in the smashed jar, it had been released to the air, or the aether, or wherever souls went when they weren’t attached to anybody.  
  
She wasn’t attached to anybody. Only to an untethered soul. Majorly shiversome.  
  
Spike’s sudden glance told her he hadn’t thought about that side of it until now. He told Willow, “What I said before. About fitting up some different anchor for Dawn. See to it.”  
  
Dawn burst out, “I don’t want that! I never wanted that! Stupid vampire, it wasn’t so you’d be my anchor: it was so I’d be yours! So you wouldn’t do something dumb, get yourself dusted. So you’d know it wasn’t just you, that you were risking! So you’d show a little sense sometimes about what you let yourself get into. And now you’ve thrown it all away, let it go smash, you idiot! Moron! Fool! Jerk!” She found herself pounding on Spike’s chest, doing no damage whatever, and he didn’t even hug her or anything, just stood and let her do it. She couldn’t reach him. Not really. This time, he’d gone too far away: inside himself. She couldn’t reach, and he wouldn’t.  
  
Willow dragged her away, saying, “There’s no time for this.” She tried to steer and push Dawn out the door.  
  
Dawn didn’t care, and said so, yanking free of Willow, glaring at Spike. “You don’t care. You never cared. Got what you wanted--Buffy--then got rid of the soul the first chance you had. Are you hunting now, Spike? Feeding on people yet? Because the bagged blood is only second best, we all know it, and now there’s nothing to stop you doing it direct again. You--”  
  
Willow shook her, interrupting, “We have to get there before dark!”  
  
Spike asked Willow, “What’s all this, then? Who’s Amy? What's she got to do with anything?”  
  
Buffy stood up behind Spike, hands hovering as though she wanted to touch him but had the nasty suspicion he was red hot, blurting, “Spike…?”  
  
Still tugging on Dawn, Willow told Spike, “I’ll explain later.”  
  
“Won’t be here later. Explain now.”  
  
In a commanding, spell-y voice, Willow declared, “ _Confutate_ ,” and everybody shut up. Dawn had words to think in, but they wouldn’t come out of her mouth. Not even an indignant _Ahh ahh_ , like when your tongue was impeded by a thermometer and you couldn’t say the truly devastating thing you were thinking. Not that Dawn was thinking anything that devastating. Or, she thought, looking at Spike being all irritated and detached, like he was around his vampire crew but never with them, because they were freaking _family_ , maybe she _was_.  
  
Her stomach was all knotted up: they hadn’t stopped on the way home and she hadn’t had anything since breakfast except the horrible vanilla yogurt and the potato chips except that now she didn’t want anything anyway, wasn’t even hungry, would probably just barf if she tried, she was so upset because nobody was doing anything about Spike. Not even Spike. And she couldn’t get the words to come.  
  
Pointing demandingly at her mouth, Dawn let Willow drag her back toward Willow’s car.  
  
“ _Locutate_ ,” Willow said wearily, making a gesture that required her to release Dawn’s arm as well as her words, and bent to unlock the passenger door because she had to: the Fiat came equipped with power _nothing_. Dawn threw herself miserably into the seat.  
  
Getting in on the driver’s side, Willow said crossly, “If you want to do something about Spike, help me identify the spell that’s making him this way.”  
  
“Yeah, sure: it’s not any spell, Willow. He’s always been like this. Except…not around us.” Dawn folded her arms hard and scuffed at a curved-up edge of the floor mat, muttering _bastard; idiot; git; freakin’ numbskull_ under her breath. As Willow got the car started and yanked through the gears (one pained screeeech!) to get it moving, Dawn demanded, “Where’s his soul now?”  
  
“Some kind of limbo, I guess.”  
  
“You _guess?_ ”  
  
“Well, it isn’t as if I read up on it lately, Dawn! But…there seems to be something like the Law of Conservation of Souls: as long as the owner’s alive, they don’t just dissipate, or I couldn’t get them back. The way I did with Angel.”  
  
Angel was undead too, so Dawn judged that a fair comparison. “How do you know you got _his_ soul back? His very own? Not just one that happened to be floating past when you grabbed?”  
  
Willow sighed, frowning at the road.  
  
Dawn added, “And don’t tell me ‘It’s complicated,’ because I frelling _know_ that, all right? I’m asking you to uncomplicate it! So how do you know you got the right soul?”  
  
“There’s a mystical connection. Between the soul and the person,” Willow formulated slowly, possibly through gritted teeth. “That keeps it waiting, wherever it is, until that person really, completely dies. Or dusts, as the case may be. When you invoke the soul, you’re also invoking the person you’re putting it back into. Because typically, that person isn’t present. So it’s the right soul. Nobody else’s would respond. I think.”  
  
“Oh, great: you think!”  
  
“It’s complicated! And I’m only just beginning, Dawnie! Give me a break here, all right? There’s lots of stuff I don’t know, and I know that. All humble about that, the way I’m supposed to be. Now please, please keep quiet: I have to review my defense spells. I didn’t think I’d have to remember them this long. And I can’t do that while you’re _talking!_ ”  
  
“That was a red light,” Dawn mentioned sullenly.  
  
“Rule two: don’t distract the driver. And do you have your seat belt fastened?”  
  
Dawn attended to it. Geez! Like it was _her_ fault Willow had run that red light! And Spike had promised to teach her to drive, except the DeSoto was someplace up on blocks, and maybe now he never would, all detached the way he was, and she’d been so happy for him at first, that he’d set aside the nagging soul that ruined everything, made everything so hard for him, and he’d assured her nothing important had changed, everything still fine between them. Sure, fine. The disconnected drift only begun then. Undetectable.  
  
Stopping the spell wasn’t gonna solve the problem because the problem predated the spell. What had only been simmering had come to a full rolling boil: she wondered delicately exactly what sort of a thing Buffy and Spike had gotten into, between them, to set off the full withdrawal. Probably something about S-E-X. Or feeding. Or both, because he still wasn’t feeding right, or enough, even though the bagged blood was human.  
  
She didn’t truly believe what she’d accused him of: hunting, feeding, the way ordinary vamps did. Mike, for instance. But if Spike detached himself from all human connections, if he no longer had them to anchor him tight, tether him close and safe, he probably would, sooner or later. Because, what was to prevent him? And what was the alternative?  
  
And if he did…and if Buffy found out about it….  
  
 _Bad_ , Dawn thought. _Could be very bad._  
  
“Dawn,” Willow said, shutting off the engine, “I need your locket now.”  
  
Looking around, Dawn saw that the car had stopped about the same place as it had before. Taking what Tara would have called “a deep, cleansing breath,” she slipped the chain of the locket over her head and surrendered it.  
  
And instantaneously felt, knew, she was no longer alone. Not exactly the “eyes on the back of her neck” sensation--more like an awareness of eyes _behind_ her eyes. A mutter of thoughts that weren’t her thoughts almost like background voices in a polite restaurant. Nothing she could actually overhear, but still there. _Lots_ of them. They hadn’t said or done anything yet but she knew they _could_.  
  
She wondered if this was how people felt when they were possessed. Or dispossessed, if it came to that. Or maybe it was like having fleas and therefore referring to oneself as “we.” Just the thought made her feel itchy all over.  
  
She trailed along behind Willow to the door and dispiritedly inspected the half-dead foundation shrubs (knowing it was the cement leaching into the insufficiently acidified soil that was killing them, without knowing _how_ she knew: she just did) while Willow rang the bell, waited, and rang again.  
  
The shadows of the opposite houses were long, stretching all the way across the street; and the remaining light was reddish and anything but warm.  
  
The door was opened by a tallish, dark-haired woman about Willow’s age. Amy--assuming that’s who she was--leaned diagonally in the doorway, blocking it. Her eyes looked somehow both surprised and sly. “Oh, hi, Willow. You decide you want to go clubbing again? It was fun the last time, so I’m still game if you are. It’s been awhile since we went out. Together.”  
  
The clear sound of insinuation was there, even for Dawn and her auditors. Dawn didn’t know what Amy was insinuating. Her auditors did, and also judged it untrue.  
  
Not a good omen, meeting someone for the first time and the first thing out of their mouth was a lie.  
  
Squaring herself up, showing resolve-face, Willow said, “I came to talk about Spike.”  
  
“Oh, is he still around? Still drooping around after Buffy, I think you said?”  
  
“They’re a bit past droop. And there’s been some problem--”  
  
“With a vamp? Why am I not surprised?”  
  
“--with spells,” Willow continued, ignoring the interruption. “Being sold to a vamp called Digger.”  
  
“‘Digger’? _Really?_ How totally quaint! And how’s your girlfriend--is it ‘Thea’? ‘Farah’? I’m real bad now with names. Maybe because of all that time I was kept as a rat--!”  
  
Other than mouthing off at each other, Amy and Willow weren’t doing anything. Except they were. Just nothing visible. But Dawn’s auditors and watchers--hell, just _say_ it: the Powers--were aware of it and didn’t care whether Dawn knew or not.  
  
It was like a shoving match: push and counter and push, like two people holding metal garbage can lids. Variously weapon, shield, and deflection depending on how they were angled, how hard they were pushed. Nothing complex or targeted yet--just assessing raw magical force and determining who had more.  
  
Amy smiled: a real nasty, toothy smile. “Tara. Of course that’s it, and how appropriate! Like the house in that old movie. Overblown, overdressed, and…over, I see. Shot by accident, hey? How excessively dumb. But typical.”  
  
Practically crackling with fury, Willow reached out and closed fingers around Dawn’s wrist. Dawn stumbled forward from a sense of _push_. Amy fell backward through the doorway. Willow advanced into the house, towing Dawn behind her.  
  
Dawn could feel the power drain. Not very strong yet. Barely a trickle gathering, running through her, and away. Something like the feeling she got when Mike had fed on her, without the nice parts. Apparently energy and blood felt much the same.  
  
She remembered Xander joking one time about how, in an alternate universe, he and Willow had been vampires. It had been a different Willow, a whole different universe; but maybe this Willow remembered. Except, of course, that she needed no invitation to go inside.  
  
One way or the other, Willow was feeding on her. And Dawn's occupants were letting it happen.  
  
Amy was tumbled on her back, one knee bent. If Dawn had been someone else, she could have looked up her skirt. Very undignified. Amy scuttled back until she hit a tall cabinet that held china. The standing plates rattled as she pulled herself upright against it.  
  
“You’re crazy,” she accused, swiping hair out of her face. “Everybody knows spells don’t work on vamps!”  
  
“Some do,” Willow replied, still advancing. “A deathwish, that’s not too hard to adapt. Because, after all, well, dead. I can see how the one in Gingrich’s _Apothecarium Malorum_ could be modified. Or did you use Morris’s _Arcanum?_ Yeah: the _Arcanum_ \--spiteful little twerp, Morris. Always reminded me of Principal Snyder. I thought it might be, when I made the counterspell. Nice to know I was right. So what was the flashy powder for, Amy? Something lingering, with poison? Play with his head, or play with his body? Because he doesn’t seem to be sickening just yet, but something’s definitely off in that quarter. You see, I’ve come to regard Spike as not only a sort of weird friend, not just my best friend’s boyfriend, which makes him a sort of boyfriend-in-law, but as an actual business partner, and it’s my professional rule _never_ to let anybody mess with my business partners.”  
  
Willow’s smile, though less toothy, was worse than Amy’s: at the same time genuinely happy and genuinely malevolent. And the rate of draw was increasing.  
  
Willow continued implacably, “I’m gonna give you one chance to tell me what you did and how you did it. Your own secret, private recipe for hurting a vamp--for money.”  
  
“Not money,” Amy blurted.  
  
“What, then?” Willow didn’t sound really interested.  
  
“A chance. At real power. Not the feeble, sucky residue, that’s all that’s left. Real power to draw on and use. Maybe I could cut you in…for a share--” Amy said, with effort, as though all the breath were being squeezed out of her.  
  
Willow laughed. It was not a nice laugh. “Power? Please! I have all the power I need, nearly all the power I can use. Freely granted, not stolen or coerced. You want to find out what a brain suck is like, Amy? I might even be merciful: not the capacity, just the contents. I don’t have to ask, you know. I could _take!_ And if you tell me right now, I might not turn you back into a rat. Keep you in the little cage, cute little wheel to run around in, great food every day--all the comforts of home. Except for, well, being a rat. It took me over five years to figure out how to undo your spell, turn you human. Turn you back into a rat, I could do it just like _that._ ” Willow snapped her fingers.  
  
Dawn couldn’t see much in the hallway anymore except the shine of Amy’s frightened eyes. The power draw was fierce…and the Powers were amenable. Shoving Dawn aside, a still point of awareness, just an onlooker, the Powers fed a rush of force through the contact. And Amy burst into flame like a vamp on a sunny afternoon.  
  
“I didn’t do that!” Willow exclaimed, flinging Dawn’s wrist away. “I didn’t spell her to burn!”  
  
(While Amy shrieked and contorted.)  
  
“Yes, you did,” Dawn heard her own voice saying. Except not her voice. The Power she was most attuned to and mostly a part of, the Power she’d taught Spike to call Lady Gates, had assumed control…and residence. Dawn was a frightened observer in her own head.  
  
“I didn’t!” Willow protested, and said a Word that held Amy and her flames still, in a sort of freeze-frame, except it was still happening. Just stopped. “I mean…I didn’t _mean_ to!”  
  
“You’d better do your brain suck now, while she’s available,” Lady Gates (through Dawn) recommended calmly.  
  
“I can’t do _that!_ I just _said_ that. Being all blustery and everything. I can’t just insert fingers in people’s heads and take their minds away! I’m not a fricking god!”  
  
Lady Gates considered saying, _I am_ , but decided it was unnecessary and possibly rude. Good manners were important when among the creatures, though less so than among her peers. Instead, she said, “You should have remembered that before, then. You shouldn’t threaten what you can’t deliver. I believe it’s called ‘bluffing.’”  
  
Looking back and forth between Dawn and flaming Amy, Willow flung up her hands and wailed, “I don’t know what to _do!_ ”  
  
“Go home. Call Giles,” Lady Gates suggested, secretly sardonic. “I’m sure he knows some way to get Amy un-flamed and back to something like her original condition. Such as it was. Repulsive little creature. But that’s a nice, solid stasis you’ve created: it should last for…oh, at least a week. I’m sure you’ll have something figured out by then. And then you can ask her your questions again. I’m sure she’ll be more receptive.”  
  
“But I didn’t _do_ it!” Willow insisted, wandering back to the car. “I don’t have the power to do a stasis. I’ve barely read about them!”  
  
“Beginner’s luck,” suggested Lady Gates, with a sweet, Dawnish smile.


	4. Trick or....

Spike returned to the factory in a really foul mood. Paying no attention to the vamps variously sleeping or performing disorganized hand-to-hand fight moves, he tramped directly back to his office, booted up the computer, and plowed into the neglected translation, which gave him the usual eyestrain headache. Blinking hard, he grimly kept himself at it until he’d finished the bit he’d been working on, carefully zipped it with the notes he’d made, and transmitted it to the Council of Watchers with an attached invoice and a request for confirmation of receipt.  
  
Ten hours, all told. A thousand dollars. Would go maybe halfway toward the first batch of the smell, not including Willow’s consultant’s fee. Not counting payment to the bloke at Oxford whose hobby was Droit, an extinct demon language, except that the bloke mistakenly thought it was a variant of Chaldean. He’d done an article on his hobby, which was how Spike had turned him up. A few of the translation passages had Droit cognates in them, and Spike only knew enough to identify the source language, not enough to read the bloody stuff. And the context had been completely mystifying without them.  
  
Turned out, one had been local slang equating whores with pomegranates: a compliment, if you please; another had been a cognate implying a rival was full of shit. All so very edifying.  
  
Anyway, that bit was finally done.  
  
Eyes shut, Spike slumped in his chair for a few minutes, vaguely hoping something might lift or change. When it didn’t, he leaned to pull a half empty bottle of JD out of a bottom drawer and washed down some painkillers from a top drawer. Smoked about half a pack of cigs waiting for the pills to douse the headache or the liquor to allow him not to care.  
  
Pills finally took effect. He’d only been working four hours or so--not enough for the headache to crank itself into an all-nighter.  
  
Checking his watch, he figured it was time to put tonight’s sweep together and returned to the main area, calling, “Here!”  
  
When his crew had gathered, he started naming off those he’d take with him. He was astonished when they started refusing. The reason? It was Halloween, and vamps didn’t hunt on Halloween. Not even other vamps.  
  
“It’s traditional,” Emil protested.  
  
“And that’s when the really big fuckers are out,” skinny, be-pinned Stait put in nervously. “Stuff that could make a mouthful of a vamp and not even chew.”  
  
Spike didn’t appreciate being reminded that vamps were the red-headed stepchildren of the demon world: regarded as impure halfbreeds, barely to be distinguished from the humans most demons preyed upon. And he certainly didn’t appreciate the suggestion there existed monsters that vamps should rightly be afraid of. He appreciated least of all being refused.  
  
He broke Emil up considerable and dusted Strait, who hadn’t really been working out anyway, and it wasn’t as if there weren’t a dozen more queued up to fill any vacancy, showing up in the sentry anteroom each evening snarling at each other, putting on a huge show of how fierce they were, hardly any of ‘em able to shed game face ten minutes at a time, damn fledges, but there was no lack of volunteers eager to be accepted to the top of the current local food chain and who the hell cared anyway. But it didn’t do any good: the rest were as adamant as before. Spike reluctantly realized he could dust them all and still not get his way.  
  
They wouldn’t see that it was vital that the sweeps happen, and be seen to happen, each of the four nights each week that the downtown was interdicted to vamps from all other territories. To them, it was just another hunting night, except that the designated prey was inedible vamps, not humans. That far, he could push them. But not beyond.  
  
And if he wiped out this current batch, he’d only have a new and even less experienced batch to train up afterward so there was no point in it whatever.  
  
“Fine!” he shouted. “The hell with the lot of you!” and tramped back to the office to stock up on weapons. Hell with it: he’d go it alone, then. He really really felt like killing something. For a long time and messily.  
  
Some son of a bitch was still turning out fledges, against the new orders, given the rate at which they continued to pop up. Some maybe were out of towners, like Sue. Certainly not all of them. And the penalty for unauthorized turning was protracted torture: demonstrations of technique for the edification of current legitimate fledges. Spike wished he had the fucker trussed up and ready to start on right now: might have been able to get a good hour in before he had to turn the doings over to somebody else, and that was another thing his court lacked--an expert torturer. Because beyond a certain point, Spike got bored and itchy inflicting pain on a helpless victim. No contest in it. No satisfaction. And, if he admitted it, a significant amount of ewww. Anyway, that was Angelus’ thing, not Spike’s. Never had been, never would be.  
  
And Buffy expected him to take that on with a soul, that'd want to sick up or faint at the first smell of burnt flesh. Want him to nag Michael to cut loose, once and for all, from that wily old wanker Digger: force Michael to choose and maybe lose him, and for what--so they could be _friends?_ When Michael was so useful just the way he was and maintaining some kind of watch over Digger was so important? Want Spike to give up blood altogether, fucking starve, on account of the soul didn't think feeding was _nice?_  
  
Soul had no more notion of vampire realities than Buffy did, and with less excuse.  
  
Be disastrous to have the fucking thing stuffed back in him now, and he’d damn well skin Red if she tried it, Spike thought, having a final few gulps of whiskey to see him through the sweep.  
  
But, he thought, after he’d dropped through the floor hole in the back corner and started trudging through the main storm drain toward downtown, none of that changed what he felt for Buffy or for Dawn. Gave him hellishly bad judgment what he _did_ about it, how he read or misread their signals. But didn’t change the feeling at all. Doing without was already like trying to do without…. Not air, because he didn’t need that. Not even blood, because he could pretty well ignore that too for quite a long time. He couldn’t think of any lack he could compare it to. The love and the connection hummed in him every second: the context that gave his unlife the only meaning that it had for him. Without that, nothing made sense and everything was dust in his hands, ashes in his mouth. Denying that, staying away from them, was gonna be the hardest thing of all to enforce on himself. ‘Cause give him one unguarded moment and he’d be there, trying to be to them what he couldn’t, not soulless; wanting from them what they couldn’t give and he had no right to ask. Doing to them things that would maybe end their answering love for all time. Things they could find no way to forgive or overlook. Things he no longer knew to guard against or might do reflexively, with no thought, when he was taken by surprise and simply reacted; when his familiar demon was running the show.  
  
Like today.  
  
Buffy had good reason to be upset. Spike knew that, in his head. He just couldn’t feel it because what he’d done was natural to him. He’d had to think and plan and guess at reactions and impose strict rules on himself to keep from doing it, over the past months. Since he’d first fed from her with her consent. Because both impulses, fucking and feeding, arose from the same place and were locked onto the same mark. It was unnatural to try to hold them separate or to give in to them only in moderation. They weren’t moderate. They were the sort of thing you forgot yourself in completely. Done timidly and only within limits, keeping a watch on yourself every second, they were hardly worth doing at all.  
  
Impossible not to want more. Impossible not to want all.  
  
So he’d make do with nothing. Somehow. Because there was no alternative.  
  
That didn’t mean he had to like it or accept the limits graciously. He’d take out his fury and frustration on any vamp unlucky enough to cross his path tonight and enjoy the hell out of doing it.  
  
He found only fledges, and few enough of them, and ripped them apart for not putting up a proper fight. For being on the wrong ground at the wrong time and too stupid and new to even know it. He’d stop and shake them and demand, “Who turned you?” and they’d gawp at him as though he were speaking Demotic Greek, which he’d actually had to brush up on lately. Fortunately there now were dictionaries online to refresh coursework done over a century ago. Fortunately Greek didn’t change much. Dead things normally didn’t.  
  
Vamps didn’t. Only him….  
  
He ran across a Cygnos, a Face-eater, in a parking lot, and it gave him a halfway decent fight before he got in a fatal axe-swing to the spine. He cleaned the axe on its belly fur and left it, limping, looking for another good go-round with something worth the time.  
  
Because things worth fighting were abroad: he could feel them. Sometimes even smell them. That little skeezicks, Strait, had the right of it: Halloween generally brought out the biggest of the bads. Spike could feel a charge of extra power shivering in the air--almost like a dim echo of the Hellmouth. It drew. And it empowered…at least those able to make use of it. And it seemed a fair number, human and otherwise, had gathered in Sunnydale tonight to take advantage of it--nostalgia, maybe. Ignorance, more like. Expecting the Hellmouth to be churning out disruptive energy full-bore, to assist and power their workings. Instead, finding a quiet little suburban backwater where the streets were almost safe after midnight.  
  
Spike cast about in different directions, trying to localize the sensation, but found nothing more remarkable than a big, bearded biker dealing grass, hash, and some highly diluted cocaine on a corner. Fairly nice bike. A Honda Shadow, maybe two years old, screaming red, covered with chrome. Nice detailing of a fiery skull on the housing, just behind the logo. Saddlebags; LA tag. Spike circled around and watched and thought for nearly an hour while the customers came and went. He’d declared dealers fair game until the smell was ready and available. But he hadn’t decided for himself whether to move beyond demons to humans. The next step, inevitably, would be hunting, and he hadn’t made up his mind about that yet.  
  
While he was watching and considering, two scruffy guys passed in a late model Cadillac, also with LA tags, and blew biker-san into eternity with a double-bore shotgun out the window.  
  
It was a bit messy retrieving the key, and the wad of small bills would need washing before they’d pass, but Spike was pleased to have the matter of the bike resolved so simply. He stowed stakes in the saddlebag and hung the other weapons from convenient thonging, retaining only the axe, that rested well enough under his leg, blade braced on a foot peg. Then he turned the key, stamped the bike into life, and was cruising.  
  
On Wilkins he spotted a fledge doing a bint in an alley and gave chase, but the fledge skinnied through a break in a fence and Spike couldn’t locate him afterward. When he swung by to check, bint had scarpered too, so no joy there either. Nothing much doing anywhere, at least that he could find. All gone to the mall, maybe--do their big mojo there. Biggest parking lot in town. Lots of room. Except he wasn’t covering the mall tonight.  
  
So he turned right onto Main, just a walking pace. Listening to the engine, feeling out the bike’s balance, checking stability in braking. Getting acquainted. Flash of metal caught his eye, and there she was: Slayer in patrolling togs, with the big two-handed broadsword, pacing by the theater. Not clued by the engine’s throaty purr, didn’t associate that with him anymore.  
  
Spike didn’t question it, didn’t think back or forward. Was simply glad. Cut the engine and coasted right up to her, within touching distance before she jumped and spun, saw, and settled back onto her heels with a glare, like she did when he surprised her, caught her right out.  
  
“Vamps on bikes,” she said. “Is that gonna get to be a thing around here? Am I gonna need a bike now to chase ‘em?”  
  
“Not while I have one,” Spike said easily, setting a foot on the pavement to balance the bike steady.  
  
“Had that awhile, have you?” she asked, knowing better.  
  
“Tonight.”  
  
“Sure: lots of motorcycle stores are open after midnight, right?”  
  
Spike bent his head, smiling, getting out a cig. Saying nothing. He knew the drill.  
  
“Where did you get it, Spike?” she challenged.  
  
“Not where, how. And the answer is, the usual way. An’ before you ask, no. Didn’t do the chap myself. Some humans drove past, did him for me. Shotgun. Didn’t stop to collect the motorbike, strange to tell. So I thought I’d try her out, see if she was worth keeping. Dreadful expensive, these motorbikes. High maintenance an’ all.”  
  
“Even worse when you actually buy them!”  
  
“Expect so.” He got the cigarette lit, drew in smoke. “Wouldn’t know about that, myself.”  
  
Slayer, she scuffed her toe on the pavement. Not to actually put marks on the leather, just one of her ways of showing hesitation, uncertainty. Not gonna give him more grief about the bike, then. Have to find something else to rag him about.  
  
“It’s Wednesday,” she said.  
  
“Thursday, actually.”  
  
“Wednesday’s patrolling night. But you didn’t come.”  
  
Spike studied his hands. Said nothing for awhile. Finally, “SITs would turn out if you asked ‘em.”  
  
“I wasn’t expecting them. I was expecting you.”  
  
“Said I’d keep your back, didn’t I,” Spike reflected.  
  
“Yeah. Often, even.”  
  
“All out of ‘orphan’ jokes.”  
  
A silence.  
  
Suddenly all bright and perky, she asked, “So how’s your sweep going? Where’s your crew?”  
  
Spike gave her a look and admitted what she’d clearly figured out for herself, which was more than he would have expected of her. “Yeah,” he said, pitching the smoke. “Sort of quiet. Didn’t need anybody extra.”  
  
“They wouldn’t come. Because, Halloween. And vamps don’t do Halloween.”  
  
“Yeah. Nothing but fledges abroad. Did a few. And a Face-eater, in a parking lot on Evans. Don’t know what it was doin’ there. Just the one, though.”  
  
“Earlier, I saw a good couple dozen trick-or-treaters, checked ‘em out. All genuine, far as I could tell. No present danger, except hyperglycemia. Cavities.”  
  
“Let ‘em pass, did you?”  
  
“Seemed the best thing. Though quite a few wanted to touch my sword.”  
  
“I get that a lot, too,” Spike couldn’t help saying, though he managed to keep a straight face.  
  
Eyes meeting, they considered the insinuation.  
  
Taking a stance, Buffy said, “You really can’t help it, can you? Give you an opening, you’ll walk right in, every time.”  
  
“You’re the one started it, Slayer, with the filthy innuendo. ‘Touch my sword.’”  
  
“At least it’s a clean sword!” Then she gazed off down the alley, so as to be looking in some other direction. “So,” she said. “You gonna patrol with me or not?”  
  
“Still thinking about it. Might do. Tradition an’ all. Good for your blood pressure.”  
  
“And you gonna come home, sleep in a bed like a normal…person?”  
  
Not looking at her either, Spike shook his head. “Thought that out already. Doesn’t seem such a good idea right now. Stay to the sewers, the odd dumpster and such till the factory’s fitted up against flame-throwers, rocket launchers, cannon. Then I can settle down proper up there. For the duration.”  
  
“And how long is the duration, you think?”  
  
“Couple months. Six at most. Unless it all goes smash first, of course. Then…I dunno.”  
  
“Can’t you change your major or something? To Landscape Design or Small Pet Management with a minor in hamsters?”  
  
“Can’t do it, love. Got to see it out. See it through. Take my best try at it, anyways.”  
  
He waited for the bleat of _Why_ , that he knew he couldn’t answer any way she’d understand.  
  
What she asked was, “Gerbils? And they say weasels make good pets. If you’re into weasels.” More boot scraping.  
  
So she was gonna leave him some room, still. Not come down with an ultimatum or a stake. Bear with him a little longer, even though it was like to tear them both apart. Accept his word that it was necessary, like he accepted her Slayer’s necessities.  
  
Like he was a person.  
  
Spike bent his head and breathed. “Suppose you’re gonna want to patrol on my fine new bike.”  
  
“I thought you’d never ask!” she said, sliding on behind.  
  
**********  
  
The third time Spike slowed the bike to a barely-balanced crawl and went into search mode--head lifted and turning: looking, listening, smelling, sensing, with the intent beginnings of a frown or maybe just his forehead slightly thickened but well short of full game face--Buffy attended too. Came up with nothing. As he apparently did, rolling the bike a little faster again, with enough momentum to keep them upright if she moved.  
  
Although Buffy frankly didn’t care if their joint sweep turned up anything fightable--scrunching up behind him on this bigger bike, arms around his waist, cheek against his back when they went fast, feeling the easy, automatic balance and motion like a dime set on edge and rolling, never quite wobbling or falling, was so familiar, happy, and good--she tapped his shoulder. When he turned to see her out of the corner of his eye, she leaned out a little and gave him a _What?_ look. He hitched a shoulder and lifted his chin in unconscious belligerence.  
  
Something, that conveyed to her, that he was picking up on but couldn’t quite locate or put a name to.  
  
She held up three fingers, pointing out how many times he’d caught that indefinite signal, whatever it was. He replied with a spread hand: more than three, then. Something that’d been itching at him awhile.  
  
Leaning close to his ear, she suggested, “School?” In response he bent the bike around the next corner and opened up, the quiet suburban street smearing by, streetlights flashing overhead and gone like a heartbeat. Outrunning their own echo: nothing to hear but wind and the muted growl of the motor.  
  
Bumping across the construction-rutted ground behind the school, weaving among the tractor-trailers and double-wides doing service as temporary classrooms, everything starkly lit by high sodium lamps, Spike halted the bike on the concrete apron that fanned out from the rear door of the gym and cut the engine. Buffy stepped down, asking, “Warmer?”  
  
“Dead cold,” he responded, automatically fishing for a cigarette. "Nothing."  
  
The high school was always worth checking out: with archeological logic of the insane-o variety, this third incarnation of Sunnydale High was being constructed on the rubble of the previous ones. Right on top of the multi-dimension portal, the Hellmouth--once Sunnydale’s major attraction for tourists of the demonic sort, now buried and silenced.  
  
Spike had already swept the downtown; the local cemeteries and hot-spots that usually yielded repeat business Buffy hadn’t checked in her patrol, they’d done a drive-by on the bike. So if the mystery tingle wasn’t here, it must be someplace else. And if vamps stayed home and cozy on Halloween, must be somebody else, too. Or some _thing_.  
  
Buffy dug in the drawstring stake bag hitched at her waist, found her cell phone, and hit the #3 speed dial. After seven rings, the call was answered by a sleepy, cranky Willow.  
  
Pacing, phone tight to her ear, Buffy reported, “Spike’s picking up on the edge of something. But we can’t localize it. Can you--”  
  
“Geezul Pete, Buffy, it’s past three o’ clock in the--”  
  
“Now, Will,” Buffy interrupted patiently, “what is the point of having a resident witch if you don’t consult her? Deep breath. D’you notice anything odd? I mean, odder than usual?”  
  
“You’re with Spike?”  
  
“Yes, Will, I’m with Spike. He’s got another bike, and we’re trying it out.”  
  
“Neat-o! You two coming home together, then?”  
  
Trust Willow to put a hopeful, romantic spin on anything. “Negotiations are proceeding,” Buffy reported. “News at six. Meanwhile: this disruption in the Force?”  
  
“What’s the bike like?”  
  
“Topic, Will.”  
  
“What color is it?” Willow asked, unquenched.  
  
“Well, it’s red. Lots of chrome. Big ol’ flaming skull on the front whatsit.”  
  
“Bigger or smaller than the former breadbox?”  
  
“Not much bigger,” Buffy guessed, eyeing the bike appraisingly. “Heavier, though. And more back seat room.”  
  
“Seat vinyl or leather?”  
  
“Who can tell, anymore?”  
  
From the bike, idly smoking, Spike supplied, “Leather,” and Buffy dutifully reported it, reflecting on spooky vamp hearing. She also relayed his answer to Willow’s next question about the make: Honda. Shadow. By Willow’s appreciative reaction, a Honda Shadow was evidently a good thing to be. So Spike was a discerning thief: swiped only the best he could get his hands on. Though to be fair, he’d been uncomplainingly afoot for over a month. Not like he’d been actively shopping for a replacement. The new bike was just serendipity in action, supply meets demand. Abandoned, it’d followed him home.  
  
“Better Spike than the police auto pound,” Buffy conceded, “fondly known to teens as the Parking Lot of Doom.” Before Willow could ask about the bike’s miles-per-gallon, Buffy again recalled her to the topic.  
  
“Can’t tell,” Willow replied, following an audible yawn. “I put the mouth on automatic ‘cause I was checking. Nothing’s sending up red signals, at least for me. But, Buffy? That doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Aetheric planes are all roiled up tonight. On account of Halloween. Something ungood would have to be right in my face before I’d notice. Did you check the school?”  
  
“We’re there now. No joy.” Buffy absently pushed hair off her face. “Well, thanks, anyway. We’ll probably check around a little more, then call it a night.”  
  
“G’night, then.”  
  
“G’night, Will.”  
  
Stowing the phone, Buffy strolled sideways to the bike, her eyes on the gym doors. Spike said, “Yeah,” and she looked around at him.  
  
“You’ve gone in for mind reading?”  
  
“You’re not hard to read, love. I cover your back. An’ I show up for your class, I guess. Have some pattern to the days.”  
  
Buffy made a decision. “And every day after work, I come up to the factory for an hour or two and train. With anybody there willing to get knocked around a little.”  
  
Spike said only, “All right,” but she could tell he was pleased. “I’ll send somebody down to the Magic Box, collect the gear. Might call Demon Girl, tell her it’s all right.”  
  
“I’ll remind myself.”  
  
“And the weekends?” he asked.  
  
Buffy smiled. “They’re for us. And for resting. Major snog: long and slow. Feed you up good beforehand, though.”  
  
Spike held out an arm, and Buffy let herself be gathered in. For once, nothing urgent. Just together and touching, and the quiet happiness of being in each other’s close company. He bent his forehead against her shoulder--against the mark--and just stayed like that, and she felt it as the apology he’d seen no point in making for what’d happened in her bedroom. She rubbed his back to reassure him it was OK, or not OK but past, anyway, and all still good between them. Dumb stuff happened sometimes, and if nobody died, then obviously it wasn’t life or death. Both of them still here, still together.  
  
He was being extra careful, she thought, and extra gentle with her now in compensation. Holding back. He’d get over it. Below the surface storms and upheavals, down deep there was an unchanging steadiness she always believed in even when she couldn’t feel it. She didn’t have to touch it often but whenever she tried, it was still there, comfortable and serene.  
  
What let them last out the rough times…that always came. And always passed.  
  
They had a joint sigh. Buffy always found that weird when it happened, considering he didn’t need the air. It was an ending, an unspoken OK.  
  
As she slid in behind, he started the bike. It had a lower, quieter note than the aggressive blat he’d teased and tinkered out of the other one, that he’d given to his vamp pal Mike as…leavegeld, she thought, retrieving the alien word with dutiful effort as Spike heeled the bike sharply around and sent it on a twisty course back among the double-wides.  
  
It was as hard as…algebra, or some other very hard thing, to hold a place open in her mind for vamp words, vamp concepts. They didn’t want to stick, or else she reflexively shut herself against them so they bounced off, gone the next second, leaving no lasting imprint. It was hard to take in the differences, his differences, instead of dismissing them and insisting that only the commonalities were real. An inner gatekeeper was continually on guard against the foreign, the ambiguous. And especially against the demonic.  
  
A Slayer thing, maybe, she thought sleepily. Should ask Giles….  
  
Whether or not, she was now consciously at war with the gatekeeper: trying to dismantle it, slay it, beat it down. Revoke its mandate to hold her shut against Spike and everything associated with him. Everything important to him, that Willow easily thought to ask him about and Buffy somehow seemed determined to stay pig-ignorant of, stupidly and willfully blind to. Willow was open and interested; Dawn was even geekishly avid, spouting Vamplore 101 even when actively discouraged. So why Buffy had always felt compelled to keep herself pristinely shut, pure, untouched by such things was a mystery to her. But she at least recognized it now and wanted consciously to end it. Because however it arose, its effect was to distance, reject, and refuse Spike. Feeling the distance more keenly in these days and nights of his absence and in his soullessness, that made everything more complicated and difficult, Buffy wanted to let him in. Hold him always as tight as her arms around his waist, never farther than her cheek against his back in the rush of wind. Always be welcoming him home….  
  
“Slayer.”  
  
Spike’s voice roused her, made her sit straight and realize she’d been drifting. The bike was halted, softly purring, by the curb in a stretch of darkened fast food outlets. She recognized the currently empty six-lane thoroughfare as the Mall Extension: the new road that led to the mall, the airport bypass, and the interchange to the main north-south highway a little past the west edge of town. This far from downtown the stars were visible, high and chill, and the breeze bore the salt tang of the ocean.  
  
A few blocks ahead, slightly uphill and on the right, a bonfire lit the sky.  
  
Large, open bonfires were not common or encouraged in Sunnydale. A definite clue, Buffy thought.  
  
“Been itching at me all night, no reason,” Spike commented. “So I thought, what the hell, come take a look. I can feel it plain now: some gits doin’ a Working, up there. Big enough, they need lots of open space, to duck or deflect any reflux coming back at ‘em or in case they raise what they can’t handle. Don’t want to start something like that in your basic closet. Blood magic, most like: dire stuff--got that feel to it, anyway.”  
  
“Hey, when did you get all expert on matters chanty and spell-casty?”  
  
“Been reading up on it lately. So: how do you want to play it?”  
  
The way he said it meant he already had an opinion. So she responded, “Gee, I don’t know, Ollie--what d’you think?”  
  
He scratched the scarred eyebrow, which meant he knew she wasn’t gonna like his suggestion. She could generally read his body language just fine, she thought smugly; only the peripherals she had problems with. He said, “Well, thought you might want to stop here while I had a look-see. Has some advantage, bein’ farsighted. Get a bit of a look at what’s up beforehand, not just go barging in blind….”  
  
Buffy showed him a bright, perky smile. “Barging’s quicker. And has the new wonder ingredient, Surprise. I like that better.”  
  
“Barge it is, then.”  
  
They unshipped weapons--Spike reversing the axe so it was blade-up, the haft securely under his knee, Buffy dangling the broadsword low on the right, just high enough so its tip wouldn’t drag on the pavement.  
  
Spike said, “One pass through, then back, plow into ‘em, ditch the bike, and go for the center.”  
  
“Definitely hot,” Buffy agreed, and braced as the bike took off.  
  
**********  
  
Slayer wanted sudden, he could give her sudden. But a moment’s longer lead time would give him a sense of the whole, where to hit first. With Buffy hanging on with one arm, behind, Spike took the bike to the entrance at the opposite end of the parking lot, rolling slow and soft, seeing what he could see.  
  
A few hundred feet off, silhouetted against the bonfire, were a bunch of blokes in monkish garb except colorful, reds and yellows and greens in the flickering light. Half a dozen or so, gesturing and chanting: their voices reached him faintly. Bloke toward the front, that would be the head Mage, was in black, with silver trim: easy to mark him, then. Take him out first, demoralize his chums, do them after.  
  
Next to the fire, trussed up to poles, were the sacrificial victims. Blood magic: stood to reason there’d be victims. Two poles were empty, surrounded by heaps of coals. Two gone, then. Three still alive, all dressed in white ankle-length tabards or rectangular ponchos or whatever the hell people were calling that sort of laundry-wear at the moment, except that the head Mage was bending to light the kindling around one’s feet. Goddam: virgin sacrifices. Spike wouldn’t have thought it possible to corral five virgins past the age of twelve in any mid-sized American town, let alone Sunnydale, whose working motto seemed to be _Live fast, before you die young._ Not counting Dawn, of course.  
  
Must be a major Working, to require the shedding of five virgin sacrifices. Spike wondered idly what the spell was intended to accomplish, not that it mattered since he and the Slayer were gonna bust it up. Five virgins. Even Jem-Har-Reesh, a pompous arsehole who claimed to have overseen the erection of the Tower of Babel, hadn’t needed but three to properly anoint the dedicated foundation stone, if his lackey’s account was to be trusted.  
  
Failing to find any switch to turn the bike’s headlight off, Spike reached with the butt-end of the axe and smashed the bulb. No need to give more notice than they had to. Pity to damage the bike so soon and all, but there you were.  
  
Do the Archmage first, he decided, then concentrate the second pass on getting between the colorful monk Mages, Acolytes, whatever the hell they were, and the sacrifices. Stop the thing from going forward, and Slayer would likely be pleased to rescue the remaining virgins, so that was second priority.  
  
Rescuing virgins always sounded good, even though it wasn’t in Spike’s present job description. He’d even let them go, if he had to: the bike was spoils enough for one night.  
  
He patted the Slayer’s knee to warn her, unlimbered the axe one-handed, and let the bike show him what it could do.  
  
Halfway to the target, they were doing sixty and still accelerating. Couldn’t manage a lot by way of finesse at that speed, but Spike braced the butt of the axe haft under his right arm, guided it with his left, and took the Archmage through the face with the blade. Let the haft drop crossways, after, to hold the bike steady through whatever cleavage Buffy was doing to the right, and then they were past and he was braking hard, pulling the bike into the tightest whip-about he could manage, all but standing it on its nose. As the bike straightened and the rear wheel caught, grabbed, and started to push again, he saw a fireball coming right at his head.  
  
Bloody hell.  
  
He leaned, shouting, “Down!” and laid the bike skidding on its side, Buffy springing clear and running past, bringing the big sword around to lay into the remaining rainbow monks. Spike heaved the bike off and started for the sacrifices, gathering in the axe and choking up the haft, limping pretty bad because his right knee and leg had been torn up fairly thoroughly in the skid, but he was still on his feet and moving, so it didn’t matter.  
  
The nearest girl, the one that’d been set alight, was too fully engulfed to have much hope of, and he’d only catch fire himself if he tried. Went at her anyway because the other two were safe, just needed cutting free. Squinting against the heat, he saw a clear spot--rope, post, no flesh--and whacked it hard. Rope was cut through. The burning girl toppled toward him just as something hot hit him square in the back.  
  
He did something, bled the heat off somehow. Didn’t think about it, just laid the horribly injured girl down and limped on to the next, freed her, and likewise with the third. Then he swung around to find out how Buffy was faring with the rainbow contingent.  
  
They were all down and Buffy had her phone to her face--calling Emergency Services, most like, for the burned girl. Looking, all the while, straight at him.  
  
All sorted, then. Bonfire seemed to have gone out some way: big fuming pile. Odd.  
  
Spike dropped down on the pavement to take a moment’s breather, rest the leg, have a cig before he had to right the bike and get them gone. No rush: Sunnydale Emergency Services were not paragons of haste on calls late at night, more’s the pity.  
  
Ex-virgins…no, ex-sacrifices, they were presumably still virgins--had run to Buffy and they were all gabbling shrilly together. Fine, so long as it wasn’t him. He felt strange and couldn’t seem to get his lighter to stay lit. Flame would take and then immediately snuff out. Healing was kicking in, though: pain in his knee was abating, and the whole leg felt as though some cool, numbing salve had been poured over it. Probably do well enough by the time he had to stand on it again.  
  
He was still working on the lighter when Buffy came up, asking with odd hesitancy, “Are you all right?”  
  
The lighter chose that moment to quit being balky, and he finally got the cig lit and took a drag. Needed it, somehow, more than usual. Still felt strange. At last exhaling, he responded, “Nothing that won’t mend. Hope I’ve not wrecked the bleeding bike.”  
  
Using the axe haft for support, he stood and went back to the bike, still buzzing like a toppled locust. Heaved it back upright and got it on its kickstand, to check it out. Some chrome on the pipes scraped and the right side mirror cracked, but otherwise no great harm he could see. And it was still running. Good enough.  
  
As he patted it approvingly on the gas tank, his sense of unease flared into alarm. He finally registered the brightening sky to the east. Bare minutes to sunrise.  
  
Not enough time to get Buffy home, but enough to reach the factory, he thought.  
  
Swinging onto the bike, he said, “Sun’s coming. Stay, or come with?”  
  
Her answer was to slide onto the bike behind him.  
  
They tore off, racing the deadly light.  
  
**********  
  
When Spike hopped off the bike and dove for the alcove, he’d already started to smoke. Buffy turned off the bike and took the keys, following more slowly, trying to think through what had happened, what she’d seen.  
  
Apparently there wasn’t gonna be a repeat of the phenomenon in daylight; but in daylight, she probably couldn’t have seen it anyway.  
  
The sentry had the sense to move clear, so Buffy barely noticed him, continuing into the interior of the factory. Spike was headed toward his glassed-in cubicle in back--no longer smoking and not limping so plainly. Remembering her, he wheeled and waited for her to catch up, setting his hands on her shoulders when she did.  
  
“You look to be all in one piece.”  
  
“Yeah. And you’re not all dusty.” She patted his face, unable to shed the anxiety she’d felt when a red-clad mage had hurled a fireball at his back and there’d been nothing she could do to prevent it hitting him. Whatever had happened, it certainly wasn’t her doing.  
  
“’M fine,” he responded predictably, turning with her toward the back, right arm across her shoulders. “Long night for you, though: want me to send out for some coffee?”  
  
“No time. I’d accept one of your crazy-making stims, though.”  
  
“Yeah, still got a few.”  
  
While Spike pawed through his desk drawers, Buffy dialed Xander, whom she considered her best bet at retrieval, construction work apparently being a dawn-to-dark business. If she hadn’t already missed him….  
  
Xander’s voice greeted her, “I refuse to believe there are now sunrise apocalypses.”  
  
Reading the caller ID first thing, obviously.  
  
Buffy responded, “No apocalypse, just me stuck out at the factory with no transport. Can you swing by, get me home?”  
  
A thoughtful pause. “Would it be indelicate--”  
  
“Xander,” Buffy said wearily, “don’t be a poop-head. Just come get me, all right?”  
  
“One rescue from sinister factory coming right up. I was just on my way out the door anyway. Ten minutes.”  
  
As she put the phone back in the stake bag, Spike was out by the gap in the barricade, shouting for water. In a glass.  
  
She’d now seen him as Dawn once had, in the last moments of the Hellmouth: _an Elf lord revealed in his wraith,_ Dawn had called it afterward. Or less fancifully, Buffy’d seen what Willow reported seeing when she bothered to look--his aura. Enormous flaming wings blazing against the dark, sucking in the flung fireball, sucking every lick of flame out of the bonfire and the burning sacrifice, before going to a bright shimmering web of spangles, and then vanished, all in maybe two seconds.  
  
She’d heard it, known it: how he’d survived closing the Hellmouth, after all, and kept the inferno heat off those there with him, too: Dawn, and Anya, and Mike. Knowing it was one thing. Seeing it…that was definitely something else.  
  
When he came back with the glass of water and offered her a pill on the flat of his hand, Buffy asked, taking them, “Do you know what you did, when that fireball hit?”  
  
"Didn't hit: dodged it."  
  
"No, the other one. Afterward. When you were freeing the burning girl."  
  
“That what it was.” He didn’t seem interested. “Didn’t do nothing. It just went off, some way. Fizzled.”  
  
“No,” Buffy said, and gulped down the pill, shaking her head. “You did it. I saw you. Went all blaze-y. Like big wings. You channeled it.”  
  
“Huh. Well, convenient, I guess.”  
  
“Has it ever happened before?”  
  
He got a cigarette out. His lighter, she noted, was now working properly, on the first flick. “Not that I know of. Except the once, of course. Hellmouth, and all.”  
  
“You’re still doing it,” Buffy said, wanting a reaction proportionate to the vision--Spike as an angel of Light. Lacking only a flaming sword.  
  
He was checking his watch and made an annoyed face. “Two hours before Ken shows up. Want to have her roll the bike inside, so I can look it over proper.”  
  
He just wasn’t getting it at all.  
  
“I can do it,” she offered, puzzled and frustrated by his lack of interest.  
  
“That’d be fine. Ta, then. Give the whelp my love and I’ll see you tonight. At the gym,” he added, when she continued to stare at him blankly.  
  
“Right. The gym.”  
  
"Skip the training today: you'll need the rest. Don't forget, though, about calling Demon Girl, that I'm gonna have the gear picked up."  
  
"Right. I'll remember."  
  
His mental checklist complete, Spike dropped onto his cot and was asleep, just about instantaneously. Buffy took another sip of water, wondering how long it took the mental-alertness non-sleepy pill to kick in. Leaving the glass on Spike’s desk, she wandered outside just in time to meet Rona arriving with the morning delivery of tribute blood. The SIT was annoyed to have again been given no directions where to bring it. “I mean, he’s all over the frickin’ map, different every day, and he _never_ bothers to call, and how does he expect me--”  
  
“He has a lot on his mind,” Buffy cut in soothingly, accepting the handles of the styrofoam cool box and passing the box smoothly off to the sentry, still taking no note of him except as an anonymous presence to her left. She was trying to decide whether to ask Rona for a lift home or wait for Xander, since she’d already called him out here anyway.  
  
Pointing, Buffy said, “Rona, Spike’s got another bike. Give me a hand getting it inside?”  
  
“That’s Spike’s? Cool! Mike see it yet?”  
  
"Maybe. I don't think so. I don't know." Despite his odd courtship of Dawn, around in the yard or on the porch every night for months, Buffy wasn't sure she'd know Mike unless he stood before her with a big sign.  
  
"He'll be green! Maybe they'll have a race."  
  
"Why?" Buffy asked, inserting the key and turning it until the handlebars unlocked.  
  
"Oh, they're always doing stuff like that. Dominance games. Like all vamps do."  
  
"Oh."  
  
The problem wasn’t the weight, it was the balance. With Buffy steering and Rona pushing, they bumped the motorcycle up the single step into the anteroom. Not knowing how the kickstand worked, Buffy leaned the bike against a bank of file cabinets lining the far wall. Spike could have somebody take it from there. One of his crew. Maybe even this sentry, whom she still hadn’t looked full in the face.  
  
With a sense of Aha!, she recognized it as an instance of gatekeeper-enforced selective blindness. Caught herself at it!  
  
She turned and confronted the sentry. In human face, he looked about twenty. Brown hair, brown eyes, no visible marks or scars; taller than she was, perhaps 5’ 10”, weight maybe 180. Wearing the colors, of course. Buffy demanded, “What’s your name?”  
  
The vamp gulped, nervous and surprised to be addressed. “Called Deuce, Miss. Slayer.”  
  
“Get the bike inside where Spike can look at it.”  
  
“Sure, Miss.”  
  
“‘Slayer’ will do,” Buffy responded dryly, then made herself add his name: “Deuce.”  
  
“Right.” He didn’t seem quite sure if he was supposed to salute.  
  
 _Idiot,_ Buffy thought, without rancor, and went back down the step into the sunlight to wait for Xander, since he’d be peeved to arrive and find her already gone.


	5. Safety Through Fitness

When Buffy opened the gym door, she gulped: wall-to-wall people.  
  
If Spike didn’t show up, she’d definitely murder him.  
  
As she was releasing the door, she heard the basso purr of the approaching bike. Jerking a sudden, hysterical smile at everybody looking at her expectantly, she spun back outside and fled to the bike, looking over her shoulder as if at a pursuing bear.  
  
“Spike--there’s _people_ in there!”  
  
“Yeah. And?”  
  
“I mean, like, thousands of ‘em! I can’t talk to thousands of people!”  
  
She finally looked and found him regarding her quizzically. “Stage fright? Never would’ve taken you for that, pet. Think as though they were vamps: still think they’re thousands?”  
  
Buffy frowned and probably pouted. “Well, no,” she admitted, replaying the one terrifying glimpse she’d had. “Maybe sixty. If they were vamps.”  
  
“Sixty’s still a lot. We’ll just take it like you’d eat an elephant: cut ‘em up in bite-size pieces.” Sliding spread fingers into her hair, he pulled her down into a lingering, reassuring kiss. Releasing her, he stepped off the opposite side of the bike, remarking, “Reinforcements coming, be here soon. I just been on with Red, they’re fetching something. Meanwhile, you just go on, get them warmed up--”  
  
“Oh, no. Oh, no. No way, Jose. You have to go in too. Now. It’s your fanclub!”  
  
Buffy grabbed his wrist and dragged him, laughing and protesting, to the door. She shoved him in first, for good measure.  
  
When she edged in behind, the gabble of conversation had shut up and Spike, perfectly self-assured and composed, was eating the whole elephant up with his eyes, deciding where to make the first cut.  
  
“Well, hullo again,” he said. “Glad the word’s spread, ‘bout this fine class. For you new folk, this is Miss Elizabeth Anne Summers,” (He dragged her around in front, so she could give them all a glazed, demented grin.) “your instructor in ‘How to Stay Alive in Sunnydale.’ That was the course title, wasn’t it, pet?”  
  
“‘Safety through Fitness,’” Buffy responded, adding hastily, “but I like yours better.”  
  
“That’s fine too. Just so long as you people didn’t show up for macramé, tatting, pet care, ‘cause we don’t do none of that poofter stuff here. Who has a notebook?” About five were wildly waved in the air. “Fine: some folk knew to come prepared. Mindy,” he said, with the barest frowning pause to call up the name, which was grounds for murder all by itself, “you tear out a page and pass it around. And you first-timers sign it, so we’ll know who-all you are. Write so it can be read, please.”  
  
Before he could go on, Buffy rose on her toes to whisper, “That’s the first time I ever heard you say ‘please.’”  
  
He looked around. “Well, have to have my public manners on, don’t I? And don’t say you never heard me beg, because that’s a filthy fib.” Looking back to the crowd, he went on, “An’ I’m William, known to my friends and many enemies as ‘Spike.’ Where’s my two tripping blokes? Andy and…George? Yeah, see you. All right, you know from jumping jacks. Get the group divided in two and lead off. Got some setting up still to do here.” To Buffy, he said quietly, “My lot, and the SITs, they’ll be along momentarily. Divide up the herd in smaller bunches when they get here. Meantime, you figure out what’s next. Got some culling to do.”  
  
Buffy hung onto his elbow, holding him place. “What d’you mean?”  
  
“Vamps,” Spike replied tightly.  
  
“If they behave,” Buffy surprised both of them by saying, “they can stay.”  
  
“Don’t think that’s such a great idea, pet.”  
  
“What are you gonna do: dust ‘em? Right in front of everybody, and the lights on?”  
  
“Nooo…escort ‘em outside. _Then_ dust ‘em. Or give ‘em a boot in the rear if I’m feeling kindly. You don’t want vamps in here, pet.”  
  
“It’s my class. I get to say who can stay and who can’t. Steer ‘em over in some corner and I’ll talk to them.”  
  
“Your call,” responded Spike, with a dubious glance and a shrug, and went off to separate the visiting vamps from the other attendees. About half the nearest group, beginning jumping jacks with their appointed pro-tem instructors, turned heads to watch Spike pass.  
  
And he wasn’t even wearing the flash tonight--just the usual well-worn jeans and black tee. Not even the duster. Didn’t matter. Moving, intent, Spike still looked like raw sex on legs.  
  
 _No sweep and no patrol tonight,_ Buffy reflected. _Hmmm._  
  
It took Spike very little time to cut out the vamps. A tap and a point toward the rear corner was all it took. Then Spike gave Buffy the high sign and they both closed in on the uneasy little group. Doing something like an impression of Principal Snyder viewing a bunch of boys caught cherry-bombing a toilet (only looking a whole lot better, undead, than Snyder ever looked alive) Spike stood with his arms folded, leaving the call to her.  
  
Buffy looked them over: six vamps, probably all fledges, two of them already lapsed to game face. Buffy didn’t take that as hostility or imminent attack: she knew they couldn’t help it, and they certainly looked miserable and embarrassed, features twitching, trying unsuccessfully to recall a more human appearance.  
  
“All right,” she said coldly, “why are you here? Figure it’d be easy pickings?”  
  
All the heads shook emphatic No’s. One of the human-faced girls said bluntly, “Heard Spike would be here. I’ve been up at the factory every evening this week and he wouldn’t even look at me, much less talk to me. Thought maybe this would give me a chance. Spike,” she said, looking straight at him, “I’m volunteering. I can fight, and I can housekeep. By the look of that place, you need somebody--”  
  
Spike said, “Shut up,” in a tone Buffy’d never heard him use before. The girl vamp volunteer immediately shut up but kept looking at him.  
  
Another vamp, one of the game-faced guys, blurted, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what’s happened. I was coming home from class, and then _bang_ , something jumped me. And I wanted--”  
  
Spike cut in, saying to the first girl, “You know where Digger’s territory is?”  
  
“Yes. It’s--”  
  
“Him, and the rest like him, you take ‘em there when we’re done here. Tell Digger they’re a present.” When the girl nodded, Spike did a point-point directing those in game face (now three) to go stand to his right.  
  
That left two, both still maintaining human face. When Buffy looked at him, the one on the left flashed a look at Spike, then bent his head and contemplated the floor. He was blond (Buffy forced herself to notice), on the skinny side, and looked in his mid-twenties. “I’m Digger’s. I’m a spy. See what’s going on here. Digger heard what happened Tuesday and told me to say it was none of his doing. I can take those fledges back. If you want.”  
  
“Talk to the lady,” Spike responded, in that flat, curt tone. “She’s in charge here.”  
  
“Slayer,” said the vamp, politely bobbing his head, eyes downcast. “I won’t make any trouble. My orders are to watch and report. I would have cleared it with Spike first, but there wasn’t time.”  
  
Buffy delayed a ruling on that one: she’d never had to deal with an admitted spy before and wanted Spike’s opinion before she decided. So she turned to the one on the right. A woman, maybe thirty; short brown hair and a pleasant expression. The woman offered, “I’m Bea, also of Digger’s district in the new ordering. Not sent, just came. I was curious. I’ve been talking to that new fledge, Suzanne. She says she knows you. Both.”  
  
“How old?” Spike asked her abruptly.  
  
“Coming on six years now. About the same as Mike.” Bea’s glance shifted, and the SITs and three vamps (in the colors) were coming in the door, two of the vamps carrying middle-sized cartons they stacked on the lowest tier of the bleachers. The other vamp and the SITs were tossing down long blue tumbling pads--from the Magic Box annex, Buffy realized.  
  
One vamp was Deuce, and another was a black woman--a surly Amazon Buffy would never confuse with Rona. So the third, Buffy figured, the tall one talking with Amanda, had to be Mike. He looked vaguely familiar. Buffy thought she recollected him from a challenge fight with Spike. Maybe.  
  
Buffy drew Spike a few steps aside, asking, “Is the spy gonna be a problem?”  
  
“Not as such. ‘Less he loses his head and goes for somebody.”  
  
“I’ll risk that. What about Bea?”  
  
“Oh, she’ll be all right. Know her a bit, actually. Gut somebody as soon as look at ‘em, good knife fighter for a vamp.”  
  
Buffy gave him a look. “That’s not much of a recommendation for a social gathering.”  
  
“She can hear us, you know,” Spike mentioned, scratching an eyebrow. “Think I’m gonna insult her, say she’s all fuzzy and safe?”  
  
“Right,” Buffy admitted, and turned back to the pair, asking the spy his name. He claimed to be called “Bud.” “OK, Bud and Bea, you can stay on the condition you behave the same as everybody around you.”  
  
“I planned to,” Bea said, and Bud nodded, commenting, “I already said. Slayer.”  
  
“Next time,” Spike said, “anybody figures to show up, no fledges can’t shed game face for the whole hour, and get themselves fed up first, right? This is a class, not a hot lunch line. And you fledges: who sired you? Who turned you?” Despite the explanation, all Spike got back was blank looks. The one who’d been jumped on his way back from class offered feebly, “It was dark,” and one of the others nodded hard, agreeing nonsensically, “Me, too.” The other two looked too slack-jawed, dim, and frightened for speech, being confronted with a contemptuous Master Vampire wanting answers, and Spike didn’t pursue the matter, waving the off disgustedly with their escort--directing them out through the school rather than back through the class, that just might have noticed something peculiar about them--those not too locked in on Spike.  
  
All right,” he called louder, crossing the floor, holding an arm up straight to get everybody’s attention, as though he needed to. “Andy and George got you all warmed up, right? And all the new folk signed the paper?”  
  
Various voices and pointing hands indicated it was on the lowest bleacher seat, all complete.  
  
“Fine. Gonna do something different now. Sort yourselves into six groups, about even. Started last time with easy throws. Tonight, we’re gonna do ‘em for real. Got pads now to cut down on the breakage. You got something pointy or breakable on you, might want to store it on the bench. Sitting this one out, myself,” Spike said, doing so. “Michael, you go at…Miss Elizabeth. Buffy, here. She’s gonna demonstrate a throw on you.”  
  
And Buffy found herself standing near the end of a long blue pad, facing a brown-haired, hazel-eyed vamp at least a foot taller, and at least double her weight. He didn’t look at all nervous and just stood there…waiting, she realized, for her to take a balanced stance. When she did, he nodded slightly and came at her, vamp-fast, arms wide, ready to bowl her over with sheer weight and momentum. Buffy turned aside, bending with the impact, coming up under him while catching one of his elbows in both hands. She lifted with her back, heaved down on the elbow, and he sailed over, landing flat on his back on the pad. He rolled to his feet, looking around a bit shyly to find his demonstration greeted by wild applause.  
  
Buffy understood: Spike wanted the contrast between her size and the much bigger vamp, to show it could be done. However, two could play at that, and more than size and weight to be factored in. “Mike,” she said, halting the vamp, and turned the sweetest of smiles on Spike. “Throw Spike.”  
  
“All right,” Spike decided, getting up leisurely. “The lady says. Get yourself set, pup.”  
  
Buffy ceded her place at the foot of the pad, and Spike made the predictable big show of loosening his shoulders, getting ready. Then he went at Mike…and cheated: grabbed Mike’s shoulders as he went over, hauling Mike with him. With his legs up and bent as he landed, Spike boosted Mike a good fifteen feet onto bare floor, face-first.  
  
Bouncing up, Spike gave Buffy a pleased smirk, then waggled a hand at Mike, inviting him to come at him. Mike tipped his head a moment, considering, then smiled and came: two long running steps, then a full-out dive at knee-level there was no avoiding…unless Spike kicked him in the face. And it was still a social occasion, a class, with lots of civilian onlookers. Not a challenge fight at Willy’s; not a street brawl. Mike apparently had a nice sense of the occasion: Spike was taken straight down on his back. They slid, Mike on top, all the way into the bottom of the bleachers. Straight-faced, Mike offered Spike a hand in getting up. Spike batted it away, then took it and was lightly pulled to his feet, to the applause and slightly nervous laughter of the class.  
  
“Fun and games,” Spike said sourly, loud enough for everybody to hear. “Everybody has to have their little joke. Let me know when it’s my turn to toss you, Buffy.”  
  
“Some other time, Spike. Like never.”  
  
“We’ll discuss that. Some other time. Looks to me like certain people don’t know when they’re well off. All right, people: everybody sorted? All sharp points and breakables put away? False teeth? All right, then, each group line up at the far end of one of the mats and we’ll work you into the act.”  
  
For awhile, everybody was scattered and busy easing the civilians into the fine art of throwing an attacker over one’s back. Buffy was advising Bea not to hit the humans so hard when she caught sight of Spike backed against a wall by a total blonde menace, hair held in a vertical tuft, groping as much of Spike’s anatomy as she could reach and Spike not doing his utmost to dislodge her, either. “Excuse me,” Buffy said, not recollecting she was talking to a vamp, and made her way extremely quickly to the wall. “Excuse me,” she said again, in a much more menacing tone. “Something you need help with?”  
  
“Hi,” said the girl. “I’m Candy, and you were awesome too!”  
  
“She’s a virgin,” Spike explained.  
  
“I certainly hope so!” The blonde looked barely Dawn’s age, though quite a bit curvier in her shiny purple spandex outfit. Or maybe it was paint.  
  
“One from last night,” Spike clarified further. “Sacrifices? Post? She wanted to say thanks…personally.”  
  
“I can see that.” Buffy also could see Spike was having a really hard time keeping a straight face. “You’re welcome,” Buffy told Candy, with hard-eyed civility. “It’s a service we perform. Sometimes. In our off hours.”  
  
“But you really, really were,” Candy told Spike, obviously continuing the adoring gush Buffy had interrupted. “With the wings and everything. Are you positively _certain_ you’re not an angel?”  
  
Spike sputtered. “Absolutely positively certain. Not a name I’d have anything to do with.”  
  
“Oh,” cried Candy, dismayed, “I didn’t mean-- I mean, if it’s secret or something--”  
  
“You weren’t to know. Now be a pet and don’t let yourself get caught like that again.” Spike turned her around and gave her a firm push toward the nearest group. To her back, he muttered, “Silly cow.” Then he met Buffy’s angry eyes and did a take.  
  
“You’re too old for her.”  
  
“Love, I’m too old for everybody, with the possible exception of Mae West. Not my fault here. Got mugged.”  
  
“Yeah, sure. Do I need to get you a leash?”  
  
“Oh, and there was this collar, studs like the belt, maybe a whip, just a small one, and--”  
  
Spike was smirking again, and Buffy felt her face heating. She bounced him against the wall, still smirking, and stomped back to the group she was supervising.  
  
The class finished out with all participants having been thrower and throwee at least once apiece with no casualties except some bruises and the nose-piece of one set of glasses cracked, and none of the remaining assorted vamps going game-faced where anybody could see them. Good enough, Buffy figured wearily, watching them scatter to collect their jackets and belongings while the vamps and the SITs took up the pads and started carrying them outside.  
  
“One last thing,” Spike called, holding his arm up, and apparently everybody knew that as an order to gather around him in a semicircle in front of the bleachers. “See, this here,” he said, pulling up one flap of a carton, then displaying a plastic bottle about the right size for shampoo, “this is Sunnydale mugger repellant. I have this consultant who’s a witch, and she magicked it for me. And you’re absolutely, positively not to tell anybody else about this, right?” He looked around for all the solemn nodding. “Now we’re testing this out, and the trial samples are free. But only if you’re really gonna use it, see, because these cost us a fair chunk of change, plus the consultant’s fee, to get this first batch out. So if you’re not gonna use it, don’t take any. Right? This is about a year’s supply: don’t want to use much, you’ll stink up the place. Just a dab on the finger, then under the ear, both sides.” He demonstrated: right over both carotid arteries. “Specially at night, when you’re goin’ out--works best then. You try it a week, let me or Miss Elizabeth know if it’s working right: see somebody you think might be a mugger, they should veer right off, not come near you. If that doesn’t happen, we want to know about that too,” he added, like that was likely, a vamp victim coming back afterward to report the attack. Buffy restrained herself from snorting.  
  
“Candy,” Spike said, waving in the blonde, “dramatic moment here: first smell test. So, tell everybody: is it awful, pet?”  
  
Slinky, purple spandex virgin Candy wasn’t at all averse to getting her face right into Spike’s neck and breathing deeply. “No!” she reported happily. “It’s nice! Smells a little like lilies! Mmmm!”  
  
Spike was not quite mobbed and bowled over by civilians eager to get their hands on the free samples…because Buffy dragged him out of the crush with the comment, “Leash.”  
  
“Only if you get the collar, love. And all the trimmings. Might have to go to a different store for that, though.”  
  
“Pig.”  
  
“Not if I wear the collar for you.”  
  
“You wouldn’t,” Buffy challenged.  
  
“Try me,” Spike replied smugly. “All right if we park the leftovers in your office, for when the thundering hordes descend on you tomorrow?”  
  
“But you said they had to keep it secret!”  
  
Spike looked even more smug. “That’s just to guarantee it’ll be all over the school by morning. Children that age, keeping a secret? Never happen. You test, pet: Red still got it too flowery?”  
  
Buffy gave it a good, thorough test. It wasn’t the overwhelming, funereal odor of the previous test batch. She could separate out a trace of vanilla and a tiny bit of lily, but the impression was…darker, somehow. It smelled…like aroused male. It smelled like sex.  
  
Buffy pulled back, wide-eyed. “We’re giving _that_ away to a bunch of high school kids?”  
  
“Have to make it appealing, love, or they won’t use it,” Spike commented quietly. “Which would you sooner have--the occasional wild orgy, or children with their throats ripped out?”  
  
“Whooh!” Buffy said, waving her hand before her face. Most of the civilians were trying out the scent, and the result was pretty overwhelming. Following the departing class, making way for the crew stuffing the pads into the trunk and rear of an ancient, sagging blue Ford sedan, Buffy gulped air scented only with exhaust fumes. Drifting out behind her, Spike lit a cigarette and leaned against the wall, narrow-eyed against the smoke.  
  
“Cousins have had the best part of a month to get acquainted with it,” he remarked, using what Buffy recognized as a common term for vamps, among vamps. “Guess we’ll see how well they remember it. And if they recall what I told ‘em would happen if they don’t.”  
  
“You gonna do a sweep tonight?” Buffy asked, disappointed.  
  
He nodded. “Just me, on my own again. ‘F they leave the smell alone, I’ll leave them alone. Have to begin the way you mean to go on.”  
  
Passing by, the big vamp, Mike, said, “I’ll help. If you want. Be around anyway.” He continued by without waiting for an answer. Spike’s eyes followed him thoughtfully.  
  
Buffy said softly, “He means hunting. Doesn’t he.”  
  
“I expect. Buffy, I called a meeting for after the class. A lot happening now. Time to compare notes, make sure everybody’s got it all straight. Didn’t think you’d mind.”  
  
“No. Meeting’s good, I guess.” Scuffing her foot, Buffy added, “And I noticed how quick you changed the subject.”  
  
“They’re vamps, Buffy. Not gonna change that. Just spread the damage a little different, maybe.”  
  
“I have trouble with that part of it.”  
  
“Know you do. Knew you would. And it’s still to be seen if it’s gonna work anything like I mean it to. But what would you put in its place? Patrol the cemeteries, take out a few fledges each week?”  
  
Buffy shook her head slowly. “At least it’s not a compromise.”  
  
“Not about to argue with you, Slayer. You do what you feel is proper. And so will I.”  
  
“I don’t know, Spike. The idea still bothers me.”  
  
“You don’t have to know about it. Any more than you choose to.”  
  
“That’s part of what bothers me. Not knowing’s not an acceptable choice, either.” Buffy gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, then went back inside. The smell had thinned out considerably. But it was still there. Like a ghost of passion and regret.  
  
**********  
  
Willow and Dawn were a little late for the meeting because Willow had to stop for the munchies and drinks that were traditional at Scooby meetings. Actually, just the drinks: she'd ordered the pastries ahead and picked them up after her last afternoon class, but you couldn't do that with mochas, lattes, and cappuccinos, which were no good, stale and cold. Parking at the school, Willow collected the two pastry boxes--each almost the size of a pizza box because after all, you didn’t want the jelly donuts getting on the bear claws or the donuts covered with confectioner’s sugar getting on the Danish--while Dawn went sedately ahead balancing the first cardboard tray of drinks.  
  
Surprisingly, the gym doors stood open, so kicking on them wasn’t required. Everybody was variously sitting on the floor and perched on the bottom tiers of the bleachers. Dawn set the first tray down a little distance away and turned back for the second while Willow made Anya budge to have a central place to open the boxes and display their contents.  
  
“I got jelly,” Willow announced, “I forgot Giles wasn’t here, but that’s OK, Xander likes the jelly, too, and then there’s the usual….” She started enumerating and pointing until Spike interrupted quietly, “Sit down, Red.”  
  
“Oh,” said Willow, surprised and a bit flustered, because after all, having Spike call a Scooby meeting was a bit flustery, and what was Mike doing here for that?  
  
Before Willow could think of a tactful way to ask, Dawn came back with the second drink tray and Buffy asked sharply, “Dawn, do you have your homework done?”  
  
“As much as it needs to be done,” Dawn responded with a private smile, setting the tray down next to the other one, and everything went chaotic while everybody stirred around collecting the pastry and drink of their choice, and Dawn was taken care of but Willow hadn’t brought anything for Mike, no way she could have known and she didn’t know his preferences anyway, or if he even liked human food, like Spike did, and how could anybody expect her to be responsible for things when they didn’t give her sufficient information. Then she noticed the smell, and stood taking it in, smiling.  
  
Still a little strong: an explanation why the doors were left ajar, to let the gym air out. But pleasant, attractive, and damn sexy, just as she’d intended. Good batch, she decided. They could proceed with that.  
  
“Sit down, Red,” Spike directed again, but she hadn’t collected her drink but that wasn’t hard--the only milkshake, it was the only cup left in the tray--but Mike’s hands were still empty, he hadn’t collected anything for himself--  
  
Interpreting her distressed dithering, Mike told her, “I’m good.”  
  
“Oh,” Willow responded, greatly relieved, and took a seat and tried to look attentive, licking powdered sugar off her fingers.  
  
“Dawnie,” Buffy asked in a slow, thoughtful way that made Willow think she’d crash soon, after being wildly hyper all day, apparently been into Spike’s pep pill stash, and that never lasted, “what are you doing here?”  
  
Willow blurted, “She wanted to come, and, and, I needed help carrying the drinks. Also…something’s happened. With Amy. And maybe Dawn noticed things I didn’t, and it’s pretty awful, actually, and shutting up now until it’s my turn.”  
  
Buffy’s eyes tracked from Dawn to Willow as though she had to push them manually, like a cart on rails. “Willow, have you been into Spike’s pills?”  
  
Willow shook her head hard and emphatically. “Just coffee, honest. Lots and lots of coffee! Hence,” she added, displaying her tall cup as proof, "the milkshake."  
  
“I believe it,” Buffy commented solemnly. “Well, suppose you tell us what happened, then.”  
  
Having inserted her straw through the cap, Willow took a big sip of non-caffeinated chocolaty reassurance and then swallowed a few times. “Well, we went out yesterday afternoon to see if I could get some information out of Amy about the spellcasting on Spike. I tried to get in and out before dark, Halloween and everything, but I couldn’t quite manage that because of, well, you know. Anyway, I took Dawn, she came along, as a power source. That I could draw on, if I needed to. All that latent keyness, you know, and that she’s, well, you know.”  
  
Crosslegged on the floor, as usual, Spike leaned his head back, commenting, “More virgins.”  
  
Willow slid an apologetic glance to Dawn, who showed no sign of minding having her qualifications to be an extra strong power source itemized. “Anyway,” Willow resumed, “I pretty well confirmed Amy had composed the deathwish, so it seems likely she also made the sparkly powder. But I can’t be 100% sure.”  
  
Buffy asked the obvious question: “Why not?”  
  
Willow poked her straw into the cup a few times uncomfortably. “Well, it got dark, I hadn’t noticed, and I suppose I wasted a little time in, you know, bragging and gloating and making threats, it’s traditional--”  
  
“Noun, Will,” prompted Buffy.  
  
“She caught fire, I didn’t mean to, just all of a sudden I had all this _power--!”_ (Willow’s hands sketched its dimension in the air, arm’s length around.) “--and I guess it sort of got away from me some way. And then it stopped, with her all flamey and everything, it just stopped, and some way I’d made a stasis to hold her like that though I don’t even know _how_ to make a stasis, just know one when I see one but what else could it be, after all? I’ve been researching it nearly all day, in the C.O.W. database mostly, it’s really lucky that didn’t get blown up, and I have a call in to the coven, but they haven’t gotten back to me yet, probably the time difference. Or something.”  
  
After a minute of total silence, during which Willow completely wanted to sink into the floor, Buffy asked in an unconvincingly neutral tone, “And you took Dawn. And sucked power out of Dawn, to do all this.”  
  
Staring at her knees, Willow nodded miserably.  
  
“I’m all right,” Dawn volunteered cheerily. “Just fine.”  
  
“And this Amy,” said Spike, “this other witch, hanging there burning all this while.”  
  
“Pretty much,” Willow admitted, chancing a quick glance, and was surprised (and relieved) to find that Spike’s cold eyes weren’t on her, but on Dawn, who seemed to take no notice, busy pulling apart her bear claw with tiny pinches.  
  
“Right,” Spike drawled, finally breaking that intent inspection to light a cigarette.  
  
They were all heavily into displacement activity tonight, Willow noticed. Except for Mike, who sat perfectly still to Spike’s right, quietly watching it all.  
  
“All right,” Spike continued, “so that’s one thing. Buffy and me, we have another. Broke up a Working just before sunrise, out at the mall parking lot. Blokes had five virgin sacrifices to be shed to power it, all lined up, trussed up to poles. Blood magic, it felt like, to me: catching twinges of it clear across town, from about midnight on, though not strong enough for me to home in on. Just twinges. Anyway, these girls, they weren’t gonna shed their lives with knives, the usual way: gonna burn ‘em. Two already gone, and one set alight, when we got there. So, spaced instead of all together, which is not the usual thing, either. And the mages, monks, whatever, were in colors--different colors. Red, green, yellow. No blue. An’ the leader, the Archmage, in black with silver trim. Not usual, for them not to be uniform. Sometimes the leader a different color, or special trim, but not the troops. Victims, they were in the usual white. S’how I knew they were virgins: can’t tell by just looking at ‘em, of course. Buffy,” he asked, turning to her, “how many, all told?”  
  
Jerking, wide-eyed, Buffy responded, “How many what?”  
  
Spike’s face went all shuttered and soft. “No matter, love. Come down here.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Come on. You’ll be more comfy down here.” Spike patted his leg.  
  
Like a sleepwalker, Buffy rose from the bleacher seat, stumbled the few yards between, and flopped down across Spike’s lap, head pillowed on a bent arm. Smiling. Spike gathered her in like a whipcord-thin, wrong-gender, peroxided Madonna, solemn and loving.  
  
“Crashed,” Willow stated wisely.  
  
“Seems so,” Spike agreed. “Guess she didn’t catch any rest, after all. Well, I know how that goes…. Anyway. There were about a half dozen of these mages, give or take. Couldn’t say for sure if the number was even or uneven, if that matters. Busy at the time. And like you, Red, I spent a good part of the afternoon poking through the Watchers’ archives. Couldn’t come up with a match for the colors. Figure they had to be fire mages of some sort or other, since they didn’t shed the children direct. Used fire as a weapon, too. Thought if I could get a handle on what they were, I might be able to get an idea of what they were about: what the Working was. Something major, with that many sacrifices…. Haven’t got any farther than that, though. So I thought I’d hand it off to you, Red. See if you could make any more of it than I did.”  
  
“Can’t deal with that now,” Willow responded, and sucked hard at her milkshake. “Have to figure out what to do about Amy. Before the stasis fails.”  
  
“These man-witches,” Xander put in, from the second row of bleachers. “Were they human?”  
  
Spike visibly closed down, and that drew a glance from Mike, as though Spike had said something. What Spike did say was, “Possibly. Slayer, she mostly dealt with them. I was getting the virgins clear, so they didn’t all burn up.”  
  
“Were they human, Spike?” Xander persisted.  
  
“Expect so. Yes.”  
  
“And you killed them.”  
  
“Yes. We did, Slayer and I. You have a problem with that, Harris?”  
  
“I don’t know, Spike,” Xander replied, saying Spike’s name with particular distinctness in response to the _Harris_. “Maybe. Just wanted to be sure. And was that the same day you threw your soul away? Or was it later?”  
  
“Next night. All yesterday,” Spike confirmed wearily. “Your point?”  
  
“Just that apparently nobody saw fit to tell me you’d had a soul-ectomy until you’d actually thrown it away!”  
  
Willow winced at the anger in Xander’s voice. He was right: somebody should have told him.  
  
“I don’t send out the memos,” Spike said.  
  
“No, but you call Scooby meetings, to which you summon me, and let children in,” (A glance at Dawn, still picking at her pastry.) “and also vamps not of my personal acquaintance. So the question occurs to me, _What the hell is going on here?_ ”  
  
“I’m not the one to ask. Just thought enough had been going on, it was time to compare notes, is all. If you don’t approve….” As if automatically, Spike’s hand smoothed Buffy’s hair. “Well, you never have, so no change there, is it.”  
  
“I’m sorry, Xander,” Willow blurted, hoping to deflect an explosion. “My fault. Last time we all got together was the party for Giles, and that didn’t seem like the best time to drop the bombshell that Spike had de-souled himself. And since, well, I didn’t think of it. Spike, you gave out the smell tonight, right? How did it go? How did they react?”  
  
While Xander glowered, Spike seemed more than willing to accept the change of subject. “Well enough, I guess. Can still smell it, can you?”  
  
“Good penetration and endurance,” Willow agreed, nodding. “And the fragrance: not too lily-ee, this time?”  
  
“Seemed fine.” Spike seemed distracted. The next minute, he made clear what he was distracted _by_ : staring straight at Dawn, he demanded, “Who are you, and what have you done to Bit?”  
  
Not looking up, Dawn produced a slow, catlike, and perfectly alien smile that set Willow’s weird receptors going too. “I’m Dawn. Who else could I be?”  
  
Willow focused with other sight and reported to Spike, “No aura. None at all. That’s not Dawn.” Willow was chagrined that Spike had noticed first, when Dawn had been wafting around, nearly under Willow’s nose, all day, except for the time at school. Asking pointed questions. Offering no answers. And it hadn’t been Dawn!  
  
“Fuck, she doesn’t even smell the same,” Spike snapped, and got an agreeing nod from Mike. “Knew since she came in, something was wrong. Anybody ever know Bit to keep her mouth shut this long at a time?”  
  
“I believe I have a name for you,” not-Dawn announced composedly. “For the monks: The Brotherhood of Lucifer.”  
  
Everybody stared at her.  
  
She continued, “They conform to the elements, hence the colors. And you’re correct, Spike: blue was missing. That would have been your Amy, I imagine. Unavoidably detained…. Correlating all the information available to me, I’ve formed a tentative conclusion about the purpose of the Working: they were trying to reopen the Hellmouth. And if that be the case, I’m willing to set aside lesser differences in preventing that. For the time being.”  
  
Spike cut a glance at Willow, demanding, “Where’s her locket?”  
  
“I took it, I had to, to draw on her-- Oh!” Willow nearly collapsed at the realization that, as usual, this disaster was all her fault. Jamming a hand in her bag, she came up with the dangling chain and concealed ward, announcing frantically, “I can give it back!”  
  
“Too late,” said Spike, contemplating the calm expression of whatever wasn’t Dawn, looking right back at him. “Want to talk to Bit.”  
  
Long silence, waiting. Then not-Dawn responded, “Very well.” Then her tone of voice changed utterly. “Oh, Spike!” she cried, springing up, and threw herself into Spike’s arms, practically squashing Buffy, who didn’t wake. “I was so scared nobody would know it wasn’t me, that I’d be gone and never come back and nobody would even notice--!”  
  
“Now, Bit,” said Spike, and tapped his arm. “I’ll always know. You all right? She hurting you any?”  
  
“She _who?_ ” demanded Xander, and was ignored.  
  
“No, not really,” Dawn said in a small, unhappy voice. “If it helps to have me out of the way, have her here and helping, I don’t mind, not really. I hear everything, see everything. Just can’t do anything! In case I don’t get another chance to say, I love you. Anyway.”  
  
“Love you too, Bit. And don’t you be scared, you know better than that. Gonna get her gone, get you back, soon as anybody can figure out how. Nothing more important than that. Not to me.”  
  
“Liar,” Dawn accused softly and with certainty. “You know what’s important, what the priorities are and should be. I’m third-ish. I don’t mind….” Then her expression and her voice changed again, and she settled herself fussily on the floor at Spike’s knee, right in front of Mike, whom she ignored. “The priority is the Hellmouth, and what forces are arrayed to reopen it. I know everyone, all the players so far identified. But I suppose you should introduce me.”  
  
“Don’t exactly know how to do that,” Spike said as though he didn’t want to, either.  
  
“Then I’ll introduce myself. Spike and Dawn are accustomed to think of me as ‘Lady Gates.’ I am a sufficient portion of what some call one of the Powers That Be: the ruling powers of the multiverse--this universe and all others. We seek order, harmony; dynamic peace, gradual evolution. Despite what our more stubborn instruments may claim, we are not the enemies of humanity…or of any of our creatures. If this is too difficult a concept, you may regard me…as Dawn’s mother.”  
  
Anya, silent through the whole meeting thus far, put on her biggest, widest smile. “And we’re all so honored by your presence and attention, Lady! I never suspected I’d actually meet one of the Powers in person! Honored, I’m sure! Bye, everybody!” Anya promptly hot-footed it out the door.  
  
**********  
  
Leaving the gym, Mike said, “There any rule we got to do this dry?”  
  
“Guess not,” Spike admitted carelessly. “My credit ought to stretch that far.”  
  
So they mounted their bikes and rolled the short way to Willy’s, where they’d first met. Spike went inside, and Mike continued to consider the new bike, and the stars, and Willy’s, and the night ahead. Not really ahead, though: it was all around, thicker and darker than nights generally seemed to him. Didn’t bother him, not really. He’d thought it through and decided how it should go.  
  
Spike was gonna kill him tonight.  
  
And that was all right, Mike had decided. It was what he’d do in Spike’s place, with a junior who’d never once been able to keep his mouth shut when he was mad, or drunk, or careless, or just ignorant of the stakes. Who’d never once looked past the present to the consequences.  
  
Likely Digger was inside, and Digger knew how to get things out of him. Push at him and wait and push some more, or praise him, or give him another drink--whatever Digger figured would serve best at the moment--and anything Mike knew would come reliably spilling out. And of course Mike would be sorry afterward, but that was no good, didn’t count for anything.  
  
He’d done it a dozen times, and he was sick of it. Bone weary of being played, being dumb, feeling regret. He thought he maybe understood a part of what had driven Spike to get the soul in the first place: vamps weren’t made to regret what they did. Had no way to deal with that sick feeling of desperately wanting the choice back and knowing at the same time they couldn’t have done any different, it was just how things were. How they were.  
  
Here’s Digger, playing around with magic and wizards, witches, and such. And here’s one of the Powers, way beyond magic, stuck itself in Dawn, that power could be drawn from. And here’s some bunch of mages, the Brotherhood of Lucifer, trying to reopen the Hellmouth, that would put the power back into the air, attract and bring in hordes of vamps, strangers, who knew nothing of Spike’s new order and cared less--more than Spike could hope to organize or contain or even dust. And it would all come apart. Exactly what Digger wanted. And here’s big-mouth Mike, who knew it and wished he didn’t because he didn’t think it was in him to hold something like that still within himself.  
  
In at the ear, out at the mouth. Except if he was stopped. And only one sure way to do that. He’d caught Spike’s eye, and he figured they both knew well enough what the answer to that riddle was.  
  
Six years and a little: not a bad run, for somebody who by rights should be dead and not have known any of it. Been some good times--and only better since he’d run into Spike and known what he wanted. To take a side. To understand a little better what this strange unlife was. How to be, how to do. Even if he couldn’t finally be or do it right. Not Spike’s fault, that Mike couldn’t come along faster, see consequences better, and act accordingly. Spike had given him every chance. Claimed him, named him his get even though he wasn’t, given him an independent part of the thing Spike was trying to make out of Sunnydale’s chaos. Tried his best to teach him though most of the time Mike didn’t listen or even recognize the teaching for what it was until he’d messed up some way. Again.  
  
Spike came back with a couple of bottles, one apiece, which was nice of him, considering. Wasn’t Willy’s cheap stuff, neither. Suitable to the occasion. They each had some, waited for the warm to hit and spread out nicely, then started the bikes again, rolling slow, cruising the places where high school aged children were to be found past ten in the evening on a week night. The movie theater; a few tame bars; the big chalk-smelling auditorium on the college campus where there were sometimes concerts and plays. Picking up those with the designated smell, then shadowing them on their way home or to their cars or their next destination. When they spotted a vamp also shadowing the designated protected prey, getting ready to make a move, they left the bikes and pulled the vamp apart in some discreet alley. With the two of them, wasn’t much of a fight, but it served to pass the time.  
  
Only sensible to get the night’s work out of him before taking care of the other agenda, Mike figured. Thrifty.  
  
After they’d accounted for five or six that way and when, by the turning of the star-clock, it was past midnight, the night went quieter. Fewer people abroad, and it was a school day tomorrow for most of those who’d been in the class, gotten first crack at the smell. They’d mostly gone home. Vamps who hadn’t had a chance to hunt the downtown much in four nights were out in force, really hungry. Mike observed some fights breaking out between different district’s vamps, between those whose authorized night this was and others who were poaching, hoping not to get caught. He and Spike stayed out of those: it was the District Masters’ business to keep their own people in line, enforce their own territorial prerogatives.  
  
They’d stopped by the theater, waiting for the last show to let out. A good dozen vamps hovering roundabout, waiting for the same thing. Sitting comfortably sideways on his bike with the kickstand down, Spike had a cigarette lit; Mike was concentrating on drinking: pity to let it go to waste. His head was buzzing pleasantly, and not just with the rattle and vibration of the bike.  
  
Spike was going on about accepting a few more people, maybe even a few fledges, so as to be able to field dusk-to-dawn sweeps in another couple of weeks. Keep a close eye on the fledges, they should do all right, Spike thought. Wasn’t as if they had to be presentable--just fight. And if they got themselves dusted, no great loss. The problem would be keeping them from eating the people they were supposed to be protecting. “No impulse control,” Spike commented sourly.  
  
“Fledges are like that,” Mike agreed.  
  
“Vamps are like that.”  
  
“Yeah. I guess.” Mike turned off his bike and stowed the bottle away: he could hear the last show crowd approaching the doors.  
  
“Need more stakes?”  
  
“Could use some.”  
  
Spike passed over a handful from his saddlebag. Then they stepped down from their bikes and were ready.  
  
The first few came out. Nothing of interest. The humans wandered past, to take their own oblivious chances with the hovering vamps. Then both Mike and Spike locked onto a pair of teenagers, one wearing the smell, one not. And also a woman behind. Spike nodded Mike at the pair, taking the woman himself.  
  
Mike eased up close. They’d made good use of the time and the dark: he could smell them on each other, enough that he wasn’t positive right away which one had the faint but distinct lily reek. Then the girl looked up and he recognized her: Candy, although in street clothes now, not the purple skin-tight get-up. Mike had to concentrate to keep his trueface from emerging: he would have enjoyed eating them both after a little play, scaring them enough to bring out the stronger flavor in the blood. They smelled delicious. But he wasn’t a fledge anymore: he could do this. And it would be awkward, after, to eat the boy and leave the girl. He supposed he had to leave them both breathing.  
  
“Hi…Mike?” said Candy, and the boy with her was annoyed and trying not to show it. Boy was also a bit nervous, since Mike was a lot bigger and looked older. Would really have felt good to scare a scream out of him.  
  
“Hi, Candy,” Mike responded. “Which way you headed?”  
  
“Just over--”  
  
As Candy pointed, a couple of vamps stopped loitering, having chosen their night’s prey. Also a couple, male and female. Mike gave his charges a push in the direction Candy had pointed and turned to intercept the vamps, giving each of them a good shove.  
  
“That’s the smell,” he warned. “You got one chance--”  
  
It had been stupid to try to warn them. The male vamp came up with a stake, and dealing with him let the female get past. She had the boy down and her teeth in his throat in under a second, which was how long it took Mike to stake her. Boy was bleeding considerable, and Candy screeching, but she hadn’t been touched, so that was all right. Mike herded them into what smelled like the boy’s car, Candy behind the wheel and the doors locked, so Mike didn’t have to think anymore about finishing the boy off, though he could have ripped the door off if he’d really tried. It’d been four nights since he’d had a proper feed. He put it out of his mind.  
  
A few vamps had collected their prey and dragged them away from the street lights to feed, so although the small dispersing crowd was uneasy, there was no general panic. Took quite a lot to start a general panic in Sunnydale, Mike had noticed. He spotted Spike ambling along between the two tripping boys, companionably talking and gesturing and having no trouble: vamps might not yet respect the smell or the colors, but most knew Spike by sight and knew enough to stay clear of him. The two boys also had a car, and when they were in it, Spike came back quick and started his bike. They followed the car to one of the frat houses and saw the boys safely inside. Mike passed back the extra stakes and only then noticed that somebody had swiped his unwatched bottle. That was annoying. He should get saddlebags, like Spike’s bike had. Then he realized it didn’t matter and was vaguely amused at himself.  
  
“What?” Spike asked. “Somebody pinched your liquor? Here.” Spike held out his bottle. After a moment’s thought, Mike took it, meanwhile standing to get his hand in his jeans pocket. As good a time as any, he thought, extending the fist to Spike.  
  
“What?” Spike asked again, frowning at the stem-winder gold watch Mike had passed to him.  
  
“Figure I’ll go hunt now, and back to Willy’s, after. Come along if you want.”  
  
“Yeah,” said Spike quietly, putting the watch away. But it wasn’t agreement, unless by way of confirmation of something in Spike’s own head. “Or just Willy’s: make up for the loss of your bottle.”  
  
Mike shook his head at the counter-offer, finishing the last of the liquor. No warmth left in it. Only a stronger sense of the dark--endless and unchanging. He pitched the bottle into the street. “Need to hunt, Spike. Wasn’t time to have anybody brought in, and we’re not that organized yet. Not to worry: I'll stay clear of downtown. And the smell. In my own district and you're invited.”  
  
Someone turned off the outside lights at the frat house. The night went thicker. Constricting. It wasn’t gonna be later, Mike realized. Not in a hunt, not taken with the hot, good blood in his throat. It was gonna be now.  
  
“Always wished I could hunt with you,” Mike said absently. “Share the hunt, share the kill. Would have been good.”  
  
“Wait,” Spike said. “Wait till morning, when Rona brings the tribute blood. I’m fed up fairly good. You can--”  
  
“Doesn’t work like that,” Mike said sadly, tired of the pretext. Hunting was only what they were talking about, not what was. Wasn't about hunting: was about Digger, and what Mike knew. Wasn’t like Spike to be so coy, run on about the edges when they both knew what was at the center, what had to happen. Why not just get on with it? Trust Spike to make even death annoying. “Can’t be but what I am…. Good thing, me and Dawn are on the outs. And with that Lady Gates shouldering her aside, no trouble there. Won’t bother Dawn none, when she comes to know.”  
  
“No.” Spike's voice was harsh, angry. Disappointed in him, Mike supposed: not what Spike had planned or allowed for.  
  
“No blame to you, I see the sense of it well enough.”  
  
“No.” The bike jerked because Spike was strangling the hand grips. Controlling the lurch, he said, “If I’d known what was gonna come out at that meeting--”  
  
“--you wouldn’t have had me there. I know. Can’t look ahead, know what’s gonna come. Just bad luck, things coming together the way they have.” Setting the kickstand and stepping down from his bike, Mike added, “I’ll make a fight of it, if that’s what you want. Come out the same regardless.”  
  
“No. I need you where you are.”  
  
If Mike had still had the bottle, he would have flung it at him. “You need somebody you can depend on! How many times you told me that? So you don’t get what you want. I don’t fit your plan. I ain’t your get, you’re not my sire. So why make a great thing about it?”  
  
“Because you’re an idiot, that’s why! And you haven’t fucking _done_ it yet!”  
  
“You know I will. And you’re the goddamned idiot if you tell yourself different! What’s to keep me from it? I always have, I always will!”  
  
“No! Fuck it to hell, no!” Spike turned the key and came down from his bike, sliding into trueface, glaring golden-eyed. “We don’t have to do it like that. You don’t need to hunt, Michael. I can do for you.” He set his hands on Mike’s shoulders, fingers digging deep, holding hard. “Go ahead.”  
  
“What--?” demanded Mike, bewildered.  
  
“You goddam fucking moron, I said I’d do for you! I’m not your bloody sire, but I still can. Go ahead: do it!”  
  
Mike’s buzzing head rocked to a hard backhand, and there was no mistaking: Spike had tilted his head aside, offering his neck, the rich, strong blood of an elder in the bloodline. Mike lunged, and bit, and fed, drawing in great ravenous gulps.


	6. Finesse

Half awake, Buffy picked up the buzzing cell phone, at first under the impression it was her alarm going off. Turning the phone right-way up, she blinked at the lighted clock face: 5:33. When she recognized Spike’s voice before the phone was even near her ear, she knew: one of _those_ calls.  
  
“--all right?”  
  
Leaning back on the pillow, Buffy sighed. “Start over, Spike, I didn’t hear you the first time. It might have something to do with its being _five thirty in the morning!_ ”  
  
“What?”  
  
He sounded as muzzy and blurred as she felt. The end of his day; the beginning of hers. Whoever thought meeting in the twilight was romantic never had a boyfriend who worked third shift. “Never mind, what is it?”  
  
“Just don’t, all right?”  
  
Buffy shut her eyes. She wished she had his neck in reach: she would have given him a thorough shaking. Not that it would have done any good. “Don’t _what_ , Spike?”  
  
“What? You try that and I’ll pull you to scraps and flinders! You’re--”  
  
Dial tone. With luck, he might not have dropped the phone or flung it at someone and broken it. Again. She turned on the bedside light, squinting, and hit the #4 speed dial. It rang, so at least his phone wasn’t broken. She waited. After twenty-two rings, there was a connection, and Spike’s voice barked, “What?”  
  
 _It’s not his fault,_ Buffy told herself, like a mantra. _He doesn’t really understand phones, forgets I can’t see him, forgets everything except his own cockamamie impulses and urgencies._ “Spike, I didn’t hear you the other time. What don’t you want me to do?”  
  
“Oh. Buffy.” He didn’t think to look at the caller ID, either. “Just don’t come up here for the training today, all right? Some other time, all right? Yeah.”  
  
Dial tone again.  
  
Buffy shut the phone off. Sliding her legs from under the covers, she sat slumped on the edge of the bed for a minute, then made herself get up, grab a robe, and head to the bathroom for the shower she’d apparently been too thoroughly conked to take last night. She didn’t even remember getting home.  
  
Some night. Some morning.  
  
Leaving the bathroom, still toweling her hair, Buffy stopped when Willow popped out of her room, dressed and frazzled, demanding, “What is it?” By the look of her, Willow hadn’t been to sleep yet.  
  
“Mystery Spike-o-gram. About a five on the hysterical scale.”  
  
“About what?” Willow seemed to expect some dreadful revelation.  
  
"No clue. Probably some trailing agenda item he wanted to unburden himself of before surrendering to the sweet sleep I'm not gonna get any more of, thanks a lot. But not enough to actually _say_ it. Like to hit him with a rock--that would put him to sleep, all right. I think he's drunk. At least. Sounded like some kind of free-for-all going on up there." Buffy paused to yawn.  
  
“You mean, at the factory?”  
  
Buffy nodded, waiting for her jaw to unlock. “Best guess. So I better check. What are you doing still up, Will?”  
  
Willow leaned against the wall. “That stasis. Dawn won’t tell me how to lift it.”  
  
“Dawn? What does Dawn--?”  
  
“Oh, you must have slept through that part. Dawn’s not Dawn. And the stasis was her doing. But she won’t tell me how to lift it, and Amy’s been like that nearly three days. Awful.” Willow shuddered, looking exhausted and haunted.  
  
Buffy tried to take that in. It wouldn't fit. Anyway, Willow wasn't freaking about that but something else. So it was probably OK, as nonsense went. Buffy shook her head, dismissing it for later explanation, and went back to her room to dress, calling over her shoulder, "Well, see she gets off to school all right, OK?" and took Willow's indistinct mutter as agreement. One maybe-semi-crisis at a time. There was just about time to drive up to the factory and find out what kind of mess was going on up there, hopefully sort that out, and get back to the high school by eight.  
  
Grabbing coffee at the new Espresso Pump drive-thru window, Buffy noticed a hand-lettered sign, NOW OPEN 24/7. Interesting. Maybe foolhardy, but interesting. Vamps had strange ideas about take-out.  
  
The sky behind her was just beginning to pale when she carefully maneuvered the SUV up the potholed drive. In the bouncing headlight beams, it was clear that the factory (no surprise) was still standing in all its weedy, decrepit glory. No invasion, no pitched battle in progress. Hadn’t sounded like that anyway, but you never knew. More like Spike drunk and teed off at some minion…and wanting to keep her out of it. Like he wanted to keep her out of nearly everything, it had begun to seem to her. Well, that was so not gonna happen….  
  
As she made her way to the annex, stepping carefully in the near-dark, she could hear Spike shouting. No other noise, though. The annex door stood open, and no sentry was on duty. That was odd and probably not of the good.  
  
She went on through and stopped just past the inner door, waiting for her eyes to adjust so she could find out what Spike was hollering about in what otherwise was silence. Somebody had crossed him, that was plain. In full-out rant mode: berating his crew, both as a group and as individuals, by name, in language graphically foul even by his standards. With expletives, most adjectives, and body parts removed, the general gist seemed to be that they were worthless, disobedient parasites unfit to stand on the earth and he wanted to be rid of them and start over with more promising material.  
  
Dim, indirect light came through the unpainted slit windows at the top, greying the big open space. She could make out Spike vaguely: his hair, and his motion--pacing, wheeling, coming to a tense abrupt halt to yell something, then pacing again like something caged, furious. Gesturing, of course: for an instant Buffy thought the shine of something in his lifted hand was a weapon, then realized it was a bottle when he hurled it against the cinderblock wall.  
  
Not a rant--an explosion in progress, the sort that had wrecked Willow’s bedroom. Not much, in this bare, functional space, for him to vent the rage on. So what was he…?  
  
In the strengthening high light, she saw them: the vamps, his crew. About a dozen, perched like so many blackbirds on one of the steel rafters at least twenty feet up, utterly still in the way only vamps could be. They’d drawn up the ropes. And Spike raging below, back and forth, unable to get at them.  
  
They were trapped up there. And though no sunlight could reach the factory floor, Buffy wasn’t so certain about the combination of the rafters, the high slit windows, and the rising sun. But none of the vamps showed any sign of moving. Either they knew they were safe or they were more afraid of Spike than of the sun. At least going up in flames would be quick.  
  
Sometimes, Spike was not to be approached. Sometimes, he’d lash out at anything that startled him or just whatever he found within his reach. Sometimes, he wasn’t anything approaching sane. Not aimless, frightened babbling, like when he’d first returned, freshly souled. Full-out violence. Explosions. Not for months, now; until an eruption last Saturday--the one that had reduced Willow’s bedroom furniture to splinters and scraps. Compulsive. Uncontrolled, pretty much unthinking. For no outer reason at all.  
  
Before the sparkly powder and whatever spell it had carried. Just Spike himself, as far as Buffy could tell.  
  
Saturday, Buffy had stayed clear until it ended on its own. Somehow she wasn’t inclined to do that now. So, big deal: he was dangerous. So was she.  
  
The fact was, she’d have had no use for him if he wasn’t.  
  
The fact was, she liked him that way.  
  
Except the crazy was a problem; and the collateral breakage was hard to justify.  
  
Assessing the situation, she hadn’t made a sound or a move in about five minutes. Except her heartbeat, when there was no other; except her breathing; except her warmth, when everything else was a steady room temperature and that on the chilly side. And then there was her smell. All things that vamps were hyper-aware of at near-incredible distances.  
  
Buffy didn’t know which of the involuntary cues was the trigger. But out in the middle of the floor with his back to her, Spike went as still as the vamps on the rafter and she knew he was aware of her. He said, “Get out,” in his ordering-vamps voice.  
  
Pushing away from the door frame, Buffy strolled toward him. “You said not to come after school. You didn’t say anything about coming now.”  
  
“You got no business here. Get out.”  
  
It was a delicate matter, she understood instinctively: the Slayer wasn’t under his orders. Yet she mustn’t make him lose face in front of the troops. Face was very important to vamps and Spike’s authority was only what he claimed and could enforce.  
  
She mustn’t jeopardize that.  
  
He was like a lion tamer, she thought. And he was also like the lion. He could be sudden and unpredictable.  
  
She recalled what had happened in her bedroom. Mostly her fault, she conceded in retrospect. They'd both been taken by surprise, and he'd simply reacted. He hadn't apologized because there'd been no choice involved…except hers, to bring him there, to have his spelled sleep out; to set the stage just so; and then wake him by dumping blood in his face. Something like getting punched out by somebody in the throes of a nightmare.  
  
This was different. She hadn’t naively blundered into it. She’d decided and come, and wasn’t backing off. And he wasn't asleep. Only fighting drunk and homicidally nuts.  
  
She circled a little until she could make out his profile. Of course in the cellar-like gloom, he was game-faced. They all would be, to see. If she came too close, he’d flash out at her. So she kept circling--an easy, unthreatening stroll. He didn’t turn, although his eyes followed her. He was holding himself still.  
  
Under other circumstances, she thought, he would have backed off, removed himself until he could settle. But he couldn’t afford that here. Not with an audience. Not with his demon to the fore. Staying still, she understood, was as much as he could manage.  
  
“Looks like you’re still having Halloween up here,” she found herself saying, as if casually. She paused. “Spike, did the leftover box of smell ever get put in my office?”  
  
He puzzled at that. “Dunno,” he said finally.  
  
“If it’s been down in the gym all night, probably a lot of it has walked. But then, that’s the idea, right? To get it out, in circulation. If I need help with it, I guess I can get somebody to help me. Maybe Maintenance.”  
  
That was good, she thought: dazzle with details, that he wasn't taking in but still trying to get his mind around. Like she'd tried to take in Dawn not being Dawn, whatever that might mean. Wouldn't compute, so she'd set it aside like Spike was trying to set aside the problematic location of the box of smell. Should make sense but didn't. Distract and deflect. Defuse.  
  
It was definitely getting brighter now. Buffy resumed her circle and, when she was behind Spike's back, chanced a glance at the vamps roosting up on the rafter. They'd moved as far as they could get to the right, huddled up under the slant of the sheet-metal roof. West: into the deeper dark, away from the dotted-line strip of narrow east-facing windows. So. That question answered. The beam was gonna become real uncomfortable in a few more minutes.  
  
Her impulse was just to wade in and slug him, be done with it, but that would have confirmed the rumors that Spike was her bedmate and no more, that the whole new order was some dire Slayer plan to rid Sunnydale of vamps altogether. That she already towed Spike around on the imaginary leash she’d threatened him with. Couldn’t do that.  
  
There were several crude words for a woman who’d do that and Spike had called her most of them, one time or another. Not lately, though.  
  
Mostly, they had an understanding.  
  
Mostly, they got on just fine.  
  
“Hey,” she said, circling back around in front of him again, “d’you have any more of those pills? Coffee just isn’t getting the job done here.” She only wanted to get him moving: out of this situation, away from his treed quarry and out of public view. But something indefinable in his expression or his body language conveyed an inner _zing_ that said her random request had hit some unknown hot button. Watching his reaction, she pushed it a little farther. “I can see you’re having a thing here, so I don’t want to interrupt. They’re back in your office, right? I’ll just--”  
  
So fast she didn’t even see him move, he’d grabbed her arm. “No. I’ll get ‘em.”  
  
Good thing she was wearing a long-sleeved blouse and jacket: the finger marks wouldn’t show. “No problem,” she said, moving away but not pulling hard. Just sort of leaning. “I know the way, and I can turn on a light. In your desk, right?”  
  
“No.”  
  
She turned full around, and he’d shed game-face. He looked exasperated, a bit panicked, and too stupid-drunk to think of an answer. Deliberately misunderstanding his blanket _No_ , Buffy prompted, “Then where are they?  
  
“Just stay here, all right? I’ll get ‘em.” He released her arm and started, a little uncertainly, toward the back.  
  
The last thing she wanted was more of those wretched pills. So she said the first thing that popped into her head: “Why don’t you want me to go back there? Have you got a girl back there, Spike?”  
  
He wheeled around and looked at her like that was the most insane thing he’d heard in decades. “In the _office?_ ”  
  
That was OK, she realized. That was an accusation that wouldn't make him look bad in front of the nervous, trapped audience. Given what he'd bluntly told her about vamps' common approach to sex, they'd probably think the better of him for it. Made _her_ look like a total dork; but that didn’t concern her.  
  
She took three strides and seized his arm the same as he’d grabbed hers. “No way you’re gonna brush me off now. Come on, show me the girl you don’t have back there.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Come on. This, I have to see for myself!”  
  
She assumed the flurry of muted thumps she heard behind her was a dozen or so vamps bailing out before they fried.  
  
She hadn’t done it for them: she just wanted to get Spike settled in time to get to work.  
  
Hauling Spike toward the barricade of dead machines, Buffy thought it would serve her right if he really _did_ have a girl on the cot: she imagined Candy. She imagined Mae West (vamped, naturally) in post-coital dishabille. With some unease, she imagined Dru, which actually might be possible.  
  
What she didn’t expect to find, when she turned on the desk light, was Mike. Fully clothed. And out cold.  
  
**********  
  
“Spike?”  
  
It was Rona’s voice. The tribute. Finally.  
  
Spike thought of calling, but she’d figure it out. Before she came through the barricade, he left Buffy in the office and headed for the west wall. Light was on in the office. She’d figure it out, Rona would.  
  
He could hear and smell the blood coming. All the blood.  
  
No. Not gonna do her like that. _Not starved,_ he told his demon, _only hungry_. His demon wasn’t convinced. Wanted to take them both. Spike shut his eyes but that was no help because he could feel it, what it would be like.  
  
“Spike?” Rona’s voice called someplace behind him again. She sounded pissed. She mostly sounded pissed these days. No help for it. “Spike, there’s nobody on the door.”  
  
Oh. Right. Should see to that. They’d still be someplace inside, with the sun up. Hadn’t gone down the drain because they’d have had to go past him, and they hadn’t. So they were still inside.  
  
Have to think of someplace to lair up. Not here. Someplace else.  
  
Wasn’t thinking straight. So hard to think of anything, feel anything but the raging bloodthirst. He’d gotten as far as daylight, and that pretty much put paid to hunting. Could stop thinking about that now. Little flashing scenarios. Pictures in his head. The good taste in his mouth. An ache, a lack, through the whole of his body. Deep in need.  
  
Rona asked where he wanted the tribute put and he didn’t know what to tell her. Couldn’t have her bring it to him or he’d take her first. In the office, Buffy was there and mustn’t be near her now. He thought he’d told her but maybe he hadn’t. It all swam together, and Rona was coming toward him.  
  
“There,” Spike directed, not turning, with a loose gesture.  
  
“On the floor?”  
  
“Yeah. On the floor. Just leave it. And if you can come up with any more, bring it.”  
  
“You mean, like, now?”  
  
Spike held himself still. “Soon as you can.”  
  
She was coming toward him. “Spike, what’s wrong?”  
  
“ _Don’t._ Go on now, Rona. See if you can scare up some more. If you can.”  
  
She ordered, “Say ‘pet.’ So I’ll know you’re OK.”  
  
He felt the shift come and go through his bones, his flesh. “Pet,” he said obediently, through fangs.  
  
“All right, if you say. You gonna be here?”  
  
Another thing to think out, sort. “Dunno. Leave it here regardless.”  
  
“Or you could cell me--”  
  
Would the child never shut up and leave? “Just leave it and go, Rona. Stat.” That was hospital jargon. He’d learned that from Amanda, who meant to be some kind of nurse or doctor or something. He was used to all the children, all the SITs. Meant them no harm. Had to remember that.  
  
“OK,” said Rona uncertainly, moving away. “If you say….”  
  
She only went as far as the office and was talking to Buffy, but Spike didn’t care. He was down on his knees on the cement floor, pulling open the cool box and tearing into the blood. The usual three bags. Would barely begin to supply the lack. Have to do, because that was all there was that was tolerable.  
  
At least he’d made it through to daylight. Couldn’t hunt now, if the children would quit dropping into his lap with their puzzled, concerned voices and their thundering hearts. Wanting to talk to him as though he couldn’t drink them down in a second, and more besides.  
  
At last, Rona was going. Her pulse became more distant and finally he couldn’t hear it at all. Nearly quiet, except for Buffy and the stronger, sweeter life in her he’d nearly taken too much of once already and wanted now so bad….  
  
Having finished the last bag, he held himself completely motionless while it spread through him. Better. But not nearly enough. As Buffy’s heat floated toward him like a red-shifted mirage, as she walked toward him to the accompaniment of the beat of her blood, Spike thought maybe he could manage. Do this, now: enough to get her gone, anyway. Until he could get himself fed back up and be answerable for himself again.  
  
He made himself shift aspect, to present a human face. That other, that wasn’t what they were to one another.  
  
But he knew his mark on her, and it pulled. And permitted. It was nearly more than he could do to keep his demon from getting past him altogether, it wanted her so bad. In all ways. Regardless and indiscriminate.  
  
Likely the liquor hadn’t helped much, in terms of control. But it had been a distraction, a blurred insulation between him and what he was in aching need of. Good enough to get him through to morning, even at the price of scaring the hell out of the crew. Those he hadn’t dusted. Anything to keep him here, keep him from going where he wanted to be, doing what he wanted to do. Keep him from flying apart in all directions, like wrecking Red’s room except with things that couldn’t be mended or replaced.  
  
“You find the pills all right?” he asked, and added, “Pet?” because it seemed saying that was sufficient proof of normalcy.  
  
“Changed my mind,” she said. “The being hyper part isn’t all that great, and conking out in the middle of conversations isn’t too hot either.”  
  
“Then you should go.” Spike glanced at his watch without noting the time. “Or you’ll be late.”  
  
“I can be a little late. I’m like a single parent, and things happen. And I should have some credit to draw on, punctuality-wise.”  
  
“Please, Buffy--just go.”  
  
“Two pleases in two days: you’re making me nervous now.”  
  
Spike guessed that was supposed to be a joke.  
  
She was close: he could feel her, smell her, sense her as sure as eyes. Her hand landed on the back of his neck and started stroking there.  
  
But he could still do it. Hold himself still. Not take her. And eventually she’d leave, and he’d find a place to lair up and sleep, and it would still be all right.  
  
Balanced on the edge of destroying what he loved most in the world, the most precious thing he’d known in all his long unlife, he stayed where he was and didn’t turn.  
  
She asked quietly, “You gonna tell me?”  
  
“Thought I had. Not a good day to start the training visits, after all.”  
  
“No, you did tell me that. Sort of. No, I mean what’s set you off like this. This is twice in under a week, Spike. Don’t give a damn what you do with your minions, but…I think I need to understand these…explosions. And why you’re trying so hard to shove me away when you don’t even have a girl in the office.”  
  
Another joke, likely. Or a try at one, anyway.  
  
She wouldn’t leave until he’d said something to content her. So he supposed he had to.  
  
“Michael needed a sign.”  
  
A silence. Then she said, “Well, that’s real helpful. In the sense of _not._ ”  
  
“He needed something from me. Thought it was his death, we both did, and that made good enough sense. But I couldn’t. Couldn’t do what he wanted, neither: hunt with him. Do like vamps do, indiscriminate. Gave me my fucking watch back--with Red’s spell in it, like the lockets--so it wouldn’t be lost when he dusted, the bloody sentimental git. Couldn’t.”  
  
“Oh: _that_ watch. The gold pocket watch inscribed to you by your father. That one.”  
  
“Yeah. Gave it back to me.”  
  
“Yeah. I can see how that could be a gut-wrencher. He’s obviously not dusted. So what did you give him?”  
  
Almost, Spike said _My life. Whatever of it he wanted. As much as he needed. For a sign._ But he didn’t think Buffy would have understood, and it would take too long to explain, assuming he even could.  
  
Coldly, factually, he said, “I let him feed from me. And all I wanted…was to come to you. And I knew I couldn’t. Not then…and not now. Not until I’ve got myself fed up again. You being here…it makes everything harder, love. Damn near impossible. Let me be. I’ll be fine. In a while. Rona, she’s gonna see if she can wheedle me some more. ‘Cause this, this is all gone, y’see.”  
  
“You didn’t hunt.”  
  
“No. Nor Michael neither. No need, after I’d done for him. But…you can’t do for me. Not that way. S’not what I want. Except….”  
  
“Except right now, it’s hard to remember that. I think I get it. Enough, anyway. Now’s not so important, we’ll have the weekend.” Her hand, her warmth retreated. “Call me when you wake up.”  
  
“Right,” agreed Spike dully.  
  
Now he just needed to think of where to lair up, since Michael had needed the cot. Yeah, and get somebody on the door. Kennedy would show up in another hour or so. She could see to it. He should leave her a note if he could remember what he'd done with the pen.  
  
**********  
  
Waking about midday, Spike uncurled in the storm bypass where he’d laired up and phoned an order for coffee while having his first cigarette of the day. It should be waiting for him by the time he got back to the factory. Then he called Buffy, as he’d promised. First item on the day’s agenda. Not much to talk about, really. Yeah, he was OK. Yeah, he was still hungry but not so crazy-starving as earlier, so yeah, her weekend plans were still on and he’d be where he’d said (Casa Summers) come sundown.  
  
He didn’t think Digger (or any of the District Masters) had the wit or the equipment to monitor cellphone calls, but human services could be purchased and there was no reason to be completely dumb about things, naming places where he’d spend the night. That started him thinking about other human services, besides coffee, he might use himself, and when he reached the factory and got the computer running, he ran a couple of searches and saved the results.  
  
Finally the coffee came--he’d hit the lunchtime crunch, the delivery kid explained, apologizing, but Spike still withheld the customary tip. It didn’t do to encourage such things, and an apology was no excuse. He expected his orders to get priority, and said so.  
  
Settling back at the computer, he was following up on the results of the first of his searches when Kennedy came in. She’d rearranged the roster to have the door covered at all times, allowing for the shorter muster roll, taking account of the crew he’d dusted last night. He seemed to have done for about half of them but fortunately nobody he couldn’t afford to lose. He’d had that much sense, he noted with scant satisfaction.  
  
Ken wanted to know what the culling had been about and he told her to mind her own business, whereupon she pointed out that his business _was_ her business now, and he gave her a stare and told her only as far as she was useful, which made her back off and go away, which was good.  
  
He didn’t feel like dealing with humans today, at least not face to face. Too many messy complications he didn’t feel like bothering about.  
  
Michael, of course, was still asleep. Still near enough to a fledge that he wouldn’t stir till sundown. The minor dust-up with Ken hadn’t even made him twitch. Leaning back in his chair, finishing the first cup of coffee, Spike regarded the lad fondly for a little while, then went back to work, setting up appointments, and visits from those available only during the day at inconvenient places.  
  
Emil had the day watch, and was a little nervous of Spike at first. Spike ignored Emil’s edginess, giving orders for a duty crew to complete an assignment at Casa Summers, and Emil settled down, seeing that the storm had passed. So that was all right.  
  
Never any harm in instilling healthy terror in the minions from time to time, for any reason or for none. Couldn’t have them getting complacent or slack. Lots more where they came from, and he’d see to that first thing this evening.  
  
Then he turned on the light, pulled up a fresh document, and methodically started on the translation. What he had in mind wouldn’t come cheap, and he was still playing catch-up on the money end. After about an hour, when the headache started, he took a break to phone Willow to tell her to expect the duty crew and let them through the spell barriers protecting the house, and no need to mention it to Buffy, it being a sort of surprise. Willow was still all wound up about that Amy, still no progress on lifting the stasis, and Lady Gates wasn’t being cooperative, no surprise, so he gave her the number of a witch he’d dealt with out of town, who might have some suggestions. The Devon coven still hadn’t got back to her.  
  
The occasion seemed appropriate. Checking his watch and adding the five hours for London time, he called Giles, got a machine, and left a message. Giles returned his call within the hour. Watcher sounded cautiously cordial enough. Spike explained about Willow’s problem and was told the coven were on some kind of retreat tied to All Hallow’s and the run-up to the winter solstice, or some such crap. The bottom line was that Giles knew a non-telephonic way to contact the head of the coven, though she wouldn’t like being interrupted, and grudgingly promised to do so, which was all Spike cared about anyway.  
  
“And how are things going there?” Giles inquired.  
  
“Well enough, I suppose,” Spike replied, lighting a cigarette and resigning himself to chat, since Giles seemed to expect it and Spike was asking for a favor. Had to keep in the Watcher’s good graces, after all. _Wanker._ “Direct assassination attempts seem to have let up for the moment. Likely gearing up for something more general. Run into a pack on a sweep, or try to take out the factory, most like, since I’m a bit short-handed at the moment.” Changing the subject before Giles could ask why, Spike went on, “Buffy’s class is going over a treat, though. Had at least sixty, last go-around. And the first of the smell’s been distributed. So that’s started.”  
  
“What sort of reception does it seem to be receiving?”  
  
“Hard to tell,” Spike responded diplomatically, since saying he hadn’t seen a single vamp veer away from it so far would sound like total failure. “Early days yet. Have to bang a few more heads or something, I guess. Tisn’t a natural association, after all. Have to wade in with a hammer to get a vamp to learn anything.”  
  
“Quite,” said Giles dryly.  
  
“I learned phones,” Spike shot back, with more indignation than he felt. “An’ didn’t roust you out of bed at three ack emma, which is more than Buffy does.” _Bloody twit._.  
  
“Point taken. And how are things otherwise?”  
  
The SITs, all three of them, were coming through the barrier, all serious looking. “Sorry, have to tend to a deputation now, good talking to you,” Spike said rapidly, and rung off, wondering what the hell the SITs were peeved about this time, knowing he’d have to deal with it regardless, so no use conjecturing, since he was about to find out.  
  
Amanda was leading off, the other two behind her; so they considered it SIT business. Amanda in her school clothes, the ugly plaid skirt and white blouse of the new order, which reminded him of Dawn. He put away for later the inward wince that thought gave him.  
  
As the three came inside, but only barely, crowded in the doorway, Spike said disagreeably, “So what is it this time? I forget somebody’s birthday again?”  
  
Amanda glanced at Michael on the cot.  
  
“Oh, you won’t budge him,” Spike said. “Don’t worry ‘bout that. He knows I’m here, won’t let you children molest him.”  
  
Amanda colored up, snapping mad. The impulse to come out of the chair and take her was controllable. “I’m skipping a history test for this,” Amanda shot back, “and not to listen to you being an asshole, Spike.”  
  
“Fair enough,” Spike said, folding his hands, concentrating on her face because humans liked eye contact, didn’t have much of any other way to know about things. Also because it might distract him from their changing scents, the triple-time triphammer counterpoint of their pulsebeats. He could do this.  
  
“Are you gonna listen, or are you gonna be an asshole?” Amanda demanded, folding her arms.  
  
“Probably both,” Rona put in snidely.  
  
“Shut up, Rona. We agreed, I make the running here.”  
  
“Just saying,” Rona responded, eyes turned aside, backing off but smelling like buried laughter.  
  
Not a one of the three of them the least frightened of him. His own fault: how he’d taught them. Likely too late to change it now without making them hate him. And he guessed he didn’t want that.  
  
He said, “So get to it, then.”  
  
“You don’t have any mirrors, that’s a given,” said Amanda, pulled up to her full scarecrow five-foot ten, looking at him down her nose. “So you probably need somebody to tell you, you look like shit, Spike.” That was strong language, from Amanda. She had to stop a second and brace to make herself say the S word. “You’re so pale you’re practically transparent, you’ve probably been sleeping in drains and you look it, your hair is a mess, and you have unhealed scabs on both hands. And you have them folded hoping we won’t notice they’re shaking. We notice, Spike. Rona called me, got me out of bed. Then Ken took one look at you and called me out of lunch. Do you think nobody will notice, or do you think nobody will care?”  
  
Spike folded his hands harder, controlling the impulse to hide them, conceal the scabs. Truth was, it hadn't occurred to him they'd notice. Or care. Hadn't thought about them at all. “There gonna be a point somewhere in all this detailed sartorial abuse?”  
  
Rona muttered, “Asshole.”  
  
Kennedy said, “I actually know what ‘sartorial’ means, and it doesn’t include unhealed scabs.”  
  
“Your point?” Spike said to Amanda.  
  
“We understand why you ended the rotation, the roster. There’s not enough of us anymore to do that. And there’s the tribute now, and it’s generally enough. But not always. Not now. You’re down a lot more than a quart, the dipstick’s coming up dry and you’re right on the edge of starving, and we know what that means. You get crazy. You _do_ things. And you can’t afford that. And we’re really insulted and angry, Spike--we’re angry!--you’d let yourself get into such a state, such severe blood debt, and not say a word to any of us.  
  
“Are we a part of this operation or not? If we’re not, I have things I could be doing instead of showing up for Buffy’s class, to make a show of humans in the colors. I don’t need jumping jacks, or to learn how to do throws. We don’t have weapons drill anymore. You’re not teaching us anything anymore. We don’t even patrol. So what are we doing here, Spike? Are we just window dressing, your token humans you trot out to make a point and then send away until the next time you need to make some point? Which, I might add, you never explain to us! You have to choose, Spike. Are we in, or are we out? Call it. Right now.”  
  
If they’d been minions, he’d have known what to do: just slap ‘em down so hard they’d bounce for open insubordination. But they weren’t. They were human children and required him to relate to them as such. And that was increasingly difficult. Damn near impossible, in fact. He hadn’t the patience for it. Or the insight, the common ground that would let him understand and see a problem before it’d reached boiling point.  
  
“You’re in,” Spike said softly. “I need you in. So tell me what you need, because I don’t know that kind of thing anymore unless you tell me.”  
  
“Without the soul,” Kennedy commented in a smug _I told you so_ tone.  
  
“Yeah. That’s part of it,” Spike admitted. “And the rest is that I don’t stretch that far. Something always getting past me, too fast for me to catch it before it hits. I’m sorry.”  
  
“Sorry is a good beginning. I think we had an apology coming, and that’s good enough. How about the rest of it?” Amanda still had her arms folded.  
  
Spike shut his eyes. Already late for one of the appointments he’d set up. Have to reschedule. Put that on the agenda. “Slayer says, starting next week--Monday, I guess--she’s gonna come up here after work, after the school lets out, and train. Maybe even with my people. If you want, you come too. We have all the gear from the Magic Box. Got the weapons you used to use, still there in the chest…. By then I’ll have new crew and they’ll need to learn lead and second, flank and point, rearguard…. Could work it like that. If you want.”  
  
“Acceptable. Maybe not every day, I’m on the yearbook committee now. But most days. And? What about the rest of it?”  
  
“What rest of it? Lost the thread here.”  
  
“Some agreement and mechanism for emergency feeding. As in now. Today.”  
  
Spike shook his head, suddenly angry. “You’re not my cows.”  
  
“If we’re in, we _are_. When that’s what’s needed. I’m not all that crazy about the terminology, but--”  
  
“Kim was my cow. Marked and claimed. And she died for it,” Spike said flatly. “ _From_ it. No. And now there’s Suzanne, turned. No. Got to keep you clear of all that.”  
  
Unfolding her arms, Amanda came forward a step and bent a little to set her long, girly hand on his rigidly folded fists. “That wasn’t your doing. Or your responsibility.”  
  
“Happened, just the same. Don’t want that for none of you, that are left. Keep it away from you.”  
  
“None of us are gonna let ourselves be turned. Not even Rona.”  
  
Rona muttered sullenly, “I never really meant it. Not really. I just--”  
  
Kennedy said acerbically, “Everybody knows, Rona. Old news. Just shut up about it, all right?”  
  
Rona retorted, “You are a grade-A, brass-bound bitch, you know that?”  
  
“A badge I wear with pride. I work at it. So sod off.”  
  
Spike started laughing. He couldn’t help it. He found their company and their bitching off at each other, and him, a comfort, and he couldn’t help that either. “All right. Have Emil fetch you some cups.”  
  
“We can do direct,” Rona argued proudly. “We’re not afraid.”  
  
“No. Not gonna mark you, and that’s not up for discussion. One was enough. And too much.” That was a sufficient reason; no need to tell them that if he started, let the eager demon take what it wanted, he was just about certain he couldn’t stop. “No more than a cup each: you’re not Slayers, to make it back in a night.”  
  
“We know, Spike. We’ve done this before--remember?” Amanda said, patting his hand. “We’ll call it ‘cup detail,’ and that’s what you say whenever the tribute isn’t enough. Agreed?”  
  
“Maybe. Won’t promise. But…I won’t forget I _can_.”  
  
“Not good enough: I want a promise.”  
  
“Well, you’re not gonna get it, so get stuffed!”  
  
“’Manda,” Kennedy put in, “you know he’s impossible when he gets like this. You’re only pushing him into asshole territory again. The point’s made. Now settle.”  
  
Amanda insisted, “But it’s important. He has to--”  
  
“’Manda, I see him every day. And Rona sees him first thing every morning. You think we’re not gonna notice when he looks like death, not even warmed over? Let it go. We got what we came for--enough, already.”  
  
Grumbling and unsatisfied, Amanda consented to go in search of cups. Never happy if every T wasn’t crossed and every I dotted all precise.  
  
He _knew_ these children: it was frustrating that he couldn’t hold them and their ways in his mind the way he was accustomed to. Just his good fortune they were stubborn and determined enough to bridge the distance between when he couldn’t. To literally share their lives with him in the most immediate possible fashion when he was too much in need to ask.  
  
By and large, they were good children. He should take better care of them.  
  
**********  
  
Since the training session had been called off, Buffy didn’t expect Spike to be home when she got there after work. Willow was on the tethered phone, sitting on the weapons chest, talking a mile a minute, enthusiastically. She acknowledged Buffy with a wave, then pointed at the phone several times and silently mouthed some word Buffy couldn’t make out. At least she was enthusiastic. That was probably a good thing.  
  
Buffy started disarming: cell phone to its charger base on the hall table, car keys in the yellow saucer, tote under the table, jacket on the wall peg. She had to write up two evaluations on interviews with students officially “in trouble,” but supper came first, and the blessed weekend was before her. Deal with that later.  
  
Straightening, she was startled to find Dawn watching her from the far side of the banister--sitting on the steps, looking through the spindles like something in a cage. Eerily sudden and still.  
  
“Dawnie, you scared the crap--”  
  
“I don’t think we’ve been introduced. You may call me ‘Lady Gates.’ For practical purposes, it would be simplest if you thought of me as Dawn’s mother.”  
  
Buffy blinked a few times. Dawn wasn’t Dawn. Oh. No wonder Spike had gone off the deep end last night.  
  
“You’re mistaken,” Buffy replied coldly. “Dawn’s mom was Joyce Summers. My mom. Dawn is my sister.”  
  
The whatever-it-was smiled. It needed practice. “I’m her other mother.”  
  
Buffy set her hands on her hips. “What kind of first name is ‘Lady’?”  
  
Not-Dawn shrugged. She needed practice at that, too. No way was she even human. “A matter of convenience, only. It suffices.”  
  
Willow came slinking out of the front room, standing just close enough that Buffy could hit her if she wanted. Making intense anxious-face, Willow said, “I tried to tell you.”  
  
“Not hard enough,” said Buffy grimly. Grabbing Willow’s arm, Buffy steered her through the kitchen and onto the back porch, and shut the door behind them. “OK, spill.”  
  
“My fault entirely. And Spike, a little, because she’s no longer anchored to his soul, except she is, really, and heaven knows where _that_ is. But my fault, I claim the blame, because I’m the one who took her charm. The locket thingie. Like you have on, that was Spike’s.”  
  
“Still listening. Still waiting for sense. Keep working at it, you’ll get there.”  
  
“Dawn’s keyness is because she was made from the Powers. You know: the Powers? Like Glory, only nicer? Except if you listen to Spike, which you don’t do very often, so that’s probably OK. What semi-controls everything--sort of like an agnostic’s version of Yahweh times about 200 or so. All jostling to be Head Egg in any given place, any given time. Anyway, this one is Dawn’s: what she was made out of, split away from. Dawn called it ‘Lady Gates,’ partly because ‘Dimensionality’ is kind of abstract, not to mention hard to say ten times fast. She’s reclaimed her part. Because she could. Because I’d taken away Dawn’s protection from that sort of thing happening, not that I ever thought it would or actually thought about it at all, to be completely honest about it, which I’m trying to be! What do I know about the Powers? Jewish lesbian witch-person: I know more about the properties of saxifrage than I do about the Powers!”  
  
“Babbling, Will. I know about the Powers That Be: they Choose Slayers. I don’t know if they vote or flip coins or what, but they do. And they send Slayer dreams. You told me so yourself, last week. As the current Chosen, unless we take Faith into account, which I’d really rather not do, my question is _What the hell is she doing here? And where’s Dawn?_ ”  
  
Willow performed a full-body wince. “Answer number one: she doesn’t like what Spike’s doing, but she doesn’t want the Hellmouth reopened either. So she wants to sit in on things in person. I guess. Answer number two, Dawn’s still there. Lady Gates let her manifest for a few minutes last night. As a treat for Spike, to keep him happy. Which he isn’t, but. Hasn’t gone for her throat yet, either. He’s biding his time, probably trying to figure how to oust her without her coming back at Dawn about it. Because they’re connected. Always have been.”  
  
“So, what: I’m supposed to just pretend I don’t have some kind of cockamamie demigod in my house?”  
  
“That would be one approach,” Willow responded hopefully.  
  
“And what’s this about the Hellmouth?” Buffy demanded, appalled at how much she’d missed. Those pills were bad, bad, bad. A major pinnacle of badness. She put on her agenda a note never to be stupid-desperate enough to do that again. Once had been entirely too much.  
  
“She says that’s what the bunch of mages you and Spike took out were probably doing. Trying to reestablish Sunnydale’s qualifications as the go-to place for vamps, assorted demons, power in the air so thick a knife wouldn’t cut it. Power for any purpose but the worse, the better. Which sounds strange, but never mind. You know what I mean.”  
  
Buffy flapped her arms at her sides. “Great. Just great. That’s all we needed. Spike’s coming apart at the seams, and now we have a resident Power mucking things up!”  
  
“He replaced my furniture today,” Willow mentioned brightly. “Not exactly first-hand, probably scavenged from deserted houses all over town, but I’m not complaining. The bed is really nice, Buffy: hand-rubbed cherry, with these big spindle corner-posts, I think maybe it had a canopy once but it’s pretty even without, and this great maple wardrobe--”  
  
“I’ll take the tour later. Now I have to start supper. Does it eat? The Lady Gates thing?”  
  
“Seems to. She ate breakfast. Half a box of the left-over Froot Loops, that Spike used to like. Eaten by hand. Or more by fist.”  
  
“Let me announce, officially, how much I do not care. Gonna introduce it to spaghetti a la Slayer and it can deal or starve.”  
  
As Buffy tried to pass by and open the door, Willow said, “Don’t count me. I finally heard from the coven, and they’re gonna help me about the stasis. They’d noticed it: meddling with time makes this little pinch in the fabric of reality, and things start to get strange around it after awhile. Not approved. Very much not approved! So they’re gonna help me lift it. Got to run now. Bye!”  
  
Supper was therefore a truly uncomfortable and bizarre experience: sitting at the kitchen island with a sardonic, sly-eyed _thing_ that considered a lecture on noodles through the ages and dimensions to be an acceptable substitute for conversation.  
  
Couldn’t just say, “So how was the history test?” after that and not feel like an utter moron.  
  
It twirled spaghetti like an expert and ate without slurping even once. _Definitely_ not Dawn!  
  
And no Spike. Dusk became dark and still no Spike. Buffy had made garlic bread for him. Finally she said, “Excuse me,” left the kitchen, collected her cell from the charger, and hit the speed dial pacing in the front yard. Only four rings before a pick-up, which was nearly a record.  
  
“Something came up. I’ll be along, just a few minutes.”  
  
“You’d better,” Buffy said. “I’m all alone here with Lady Godlier Than Thou and need extensive reasons not to smash her face in.”  
  
“Yeah.” Spike sounded resigned. “But she’s goin’ to a movie. All set up. With an escort to keep an eye on her. All taken care of, love. Now I got to see to this, here.”  
  
End of conversation. Spike wasn’t big on hellos or goodbyes. The next second, the phone buzzed, and it was Spike again: “Forgot to say. If Red’s not there, don’t go in the basement. All right?”  
  
“Why?” Buffy asked blankly.  
  
“Because.”  
  
Dial tone.  
  
 _He really doesn’t understand humans at all anymore,_ Buffy reflected, setting the phone back in its charger as she made a bee-line to the cellar stairs.  
  
It was a bed. Slightly smaller than a tennis court. Made up, grotesquely and endearingly, in the colors: black satinesque sheets, a big red goose-down duvet that could have served as a cover for your average VW beetle. Three king-size pillows wide. Buffy wondered where he’d found such a monstrosity but then thought it was probably better not to know. It was possible he’d even ordered it, had it custom-built, delivered, and installed: it certainly hadn’t been there Tuesday morning, when she’d done the most recent load of wash as one of the distractions, passing the time until Spike woke….  
  
Besides the bed, he’d turned the basement into an attempt at a bower: thick but probably not sound-proof tapestries, of the stag-at-bay Wal-Mart variety, tacked up to the rafters on both sides, ceiling to floor. Another swagged up at the foot, ready to drop at the tug of a cord. Be all cozy then. He’d had something like this in his crypt, on the lower level. To keep out drafts, mostly. Because she’d complained of the cold.  
  
Really, she shouldn’t have come down. He’d want to have a Grand Unveiling, and she’d spoiled the surprise. Have to pretend she’d never looked. Anything else would be cruel.  
  
As she swung quickly around to go back upstairs--there wasn’t a foot of clearance between the bottom of the stairs and the foot of the bed--something caught her eye under a hanging corner of the duvet: the legs of the bed were bolted to the floor. She slowly sank down on the steps, looking at where the head of the bed was situated: out from the wall, a good foot and a half. No hanging suspended there. Mustn’t impede the shortened reach of the manacles whose slack was further taken up by the chains being wound twice around the top of the bolted-down bed frame. One manacle laid neatly at each top corner, not quite hidden enough by the pillows.  
  
Her heart just sank. Though they’d played bondage games sometimes, by mutual consent and inclination, no way were the manacles intended for her. The bed and the hangings were only window dressing to make the bed’s position and the manacles less conspicuous and maybe marginally acceptable. They failed  
  
She thought it was the saddest thing she’d ever seen, except her mom’s body on the couch. But that had been frightening. This was too, in its baroque fashion.  
  
Long before she was ready, she heard the door creak. He came down maybe one step and settled there, waiting for her reaction.  
  
“It’s very…ingenious,” she made herself say. “I can see you went to a lot of trouble for this. A lot of thought. It would have fit better in the sink end, though.”  
  
“Didn’t trust those morons to mess around with your plumbing. Didn’t want you greeted by a flood. When you saw it. So. Bad idea, was it?”  
  
She twisted around to see him. He was just looking down at her with no particular expression, hands dangling over his knees. The scabs were all gone from his knuckles, she noticed: he’d fed up, then, before coming. But of course he would. This was all about Tuesday…and preventing its ever being repeated.  
  
About having sex with a man immobilized in shackles, instead.  
  
Which was never gonna happen. Not like this. No way. Never.  
  
Just the thought of it made her feel sick and wrong.  
  
Not gonna nag him again about the soul. Already did that. He knew. Knew the demand. And this was his answer.  
  
No. Not gonna think about it. She asked, “You got your bike?” He nodded. “Let’s go. I don’t care where--I’m just…sick of Sunnydale right now. Anyplace.”  
  
“Noplace,” he said, looking at his hands. “Don’t think that would be a real great idea right now. Can’t answer…for what might come of it.”  
  
“I trust you!”  
  
“I don’t. An’ I’m not gonna risk it. Could I…maybe use your shower? I been informed by experts that I look like a bum. Or maybe a corpse. Corpse of a bum?” He put his hands over his face, bending into them. Not making a sound.  
  
There wasn’t room for both of them on the step. Buffy shoved his feet aside and sat on the step below, gathering him in, holding hard, her forehead against his hands.  
  
The shaking was too fast for sobbing. That’s what it was, all the same: she knew.  
  
“Sorry,” he said eventually, pulling fingers down a face as empty and bleak as she’d ever seen it, “that it’s-- Sorry.” He stared straight ahead, looking at nothing. “Later. Tomorrow. I’ll send some…somebody to collect the rest of my things. What’s left. And take this--” (His hand waved vaguely bed-ward.) “--all away. Be useful for something. Sometime. Not a total….” He shut his eyes hard, swallowing words down unspoken. “Don’t know how to do this, love. Never did it before.”  
  
Buffy said nothing. He’d left before. But it wasn’t the same. No comparison whatever.  
  
Continuing the conversation they weren’t having, in his head, he announced abruptly, “Still turn out for patrol, and like that. An’ your class and all…. And the SITs, told them come Monday, you’d be turning up. To train, like you said, and they were gonna…. Gonna join in, they miss the weapons drill, seems like. I don’t know--” He looked at her then. Looked her straight in the eyes. “Might not be too bad. I’ve done worse. An’ had worse done to me. You were the one joking about a leash. Won’t you even try?”  
  
“Some things, I don’t have to do even once to know I never want to do them again. And…I don’t want to tell you how it makes me feel to know you’d settle for that.”  
  
“Settle for damn near anything you could name, pet. Not proud. Not real proud of myself just now, that’s true. Thought maybe…there was still an inch of ground that could be…. But no, ‘course you’re right, wouldn’t do, not at all. If there’s a good way to do this, I dunno what it is.”  
  
She wondered if he realized his fingers were steadily combing through her hair. Probably not. He was as far away from himself as it was possible to get. Even the mouth was running mainly on automatic, disconnected from everything. Like getting one of his incoherent Spike-o-gram early morning phone calls, except in person.  
  
Completely stuck. Balked. Blocked. She thought they could sit there till daybreak and he’d still be throwing out random, incomplete phrases, still not moving. Couldn’t go forward, wouldn’t go back. And unable to just disengage, leave it. He needed a push to get him out of that dead-ended rut.  
  
“Take your shower,” she said. “Your experts were onto something. Then I’ll help you get your things together. And I’ll come Monday like I said I would. Mustn’t disappoint the SITs. Gets too complicated that way. When--”  
  
“Could I stay here? Down here, just for tonight? Bolt the door, both sides? Be no trouble, only I can’t, don’t want to go back there just yet. Only for tonight.”  
  
“With the door bolted. Both sides. That either of us could break down in a minute.”  
  
“Yeah,” he said, and almost smiled. “Dunno there’s much we couldn’t get through that way. Except this.”  
  
She took his hands and held them really hard. “You know what you have to do. When you’re ready, or when it gets bad enough, you’ll do it: put the soul back. Or I will.”  
  
“No,” he said, like a whip crack. “That’d be worse than the shackles. Don’t even think about it. I’m not Angel. Nor Angelus neither. You do that to me and there’s nothing left. It all goes smash. If you can’t see that, believe it anyway. No coming back from that.”  
  
“How could it be worse, putting it back, than taking it away in the first place? Something that vamps do all the time?”  
  
“Not me. I don’t. No. Deal with it because I have to, but I don’t do it. The ones I made, was forced into turning, I did ‘em all. They’re gone. Bit, she helped me. You can ask-- No, you can’t,” he realized. And he went away somehow. Blank: eyes open, but nobody home behind them.  
  
“Spike?”  
  
He focused again. But slowly. And not all the way. “Lost the thread there. Sorry. No matter. Nothing that concerned you anyway. Sometime, if you want, you can have Bit tell you. Or not. Whatever you please.” He pushed to his feet and went into the hall. But not up the stairs. After a couple of minutes Buffy heard his bike start up and then recede.


	7. Contractors

“Well,” said Xander, coming into the office with a surly scowl, “what’s this about?”  
  
“Sit.” Spike leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes. In the middle stage of headache: he could still attend, make sense. Figured to work till noon, then have a kip till sundown. Audition recruits, then a sweep after to try them out.  
  
Second week of the new order. With the big changes in place and rolling, time to try to get things on some kind of reliable schedule, not be making it up from minute to minute. Too crazy and too exhausting. The factory was fairly secure now: no more lairing up in drains, a different place every night. With a central base and a schedule, time to look to further things, get them delegated and begun.  
  
As Xander pulled up a chair and consented to sit, smelling hostile and what Spike interpreted as suspicious, Spike went on, “We had a good patch there for awhile. Some way, that’s gone. Dunno what I done to put you off me--”  
  
“It’s not what you _do_ , Spike: it’s what you _are_.”  
  
“That’s as may be. But Red, she values you. So do Buffy and Dawn. So that gives you a free pass from me. I’ll never let hurt come to you if I can stop it. Not from me. Not from anybody. You ask me for something I can do, you got it. No questions or conditions. Can’t be but what I am. Can’t change that, even if I wanted to, which I don’t. That aside, though you annoy the hell out of me sometimes, and I expect I’m never gonna be on your list of favorite people, I want to get on with you. Not be always sniping back and forth, trading threats and bluster. Not that it’s not fun, but it bothers the womenfolk. Our womenfolk. As of now, I quit. You win, if that’s what you want. Declare a victory, have a truce. Hope you’re willing to quit, too.”  
  
Xander stared at him with his big brown puppy eyes for a long minute. “I don’t like it that you can say ‘our womenfolk.’ Like we’d gone partners in a herd of cattle. Don’t like that at all.”  
  
“I withdraw it, then. Not gonna argue words with you. We both want them happy, according to whatever lets them be happy. Us at odds don’t do that. Your claim on them is older than mine, so the call’s yours. Gonna have a truce here, or more pointless bickering? ‘Cause I’m not gonna eat you, and you’re not gonna stake me. That’s fact, and we both know it.”  
  
“You step out of line and I’d stake you in a minute!”  
  
“Trying to mind the line here. As best I can. Trying to give you the respect you’re due for keeping faith, all these years, with Buffy and Willow and Dawn. You can throw it back in my face. Your option. Just don’t see what purpose it would serve, myself. You think about it. By what you do, I’ll know what you decided. Not why I asked you to come up here anyway.”  
  
Xander folded his arms, so as not to show any compromise or give. His scent went more neutral, though: less outright antagonism. “Then what?”  
  
“Got a job of work to be done. Fix up Casa Summers like it was. Better. All the busted, boarded up windows. The holes in the walls. All the doors that creak or don’t fit or close tight. All the sinks that don’t drain right. The water heater that leaks. Whatever else needs doing, that I don’t know enough to notice. Things that need replacing ‘cause they’re too old to serve.” When Xander didn’t say anything, just blinked at him thoughtfully, Spike went on, “I know you been doing what you could. But your time’s limited, and materials cost money. I figure likely you already got a list in your head, what you’d do if you had the dosh. From your work, I figure you know who’s reliable, gives good value, knows their job. I want you to be contractor, deal the parts of the job out to people you have confidence in. Not do, yourself, except as you have the time and the inclination.”  
  
“So you can take all the credit!”  
  
Flash of strong jealousy, outright hatred. No surprise there.  
  
Spike shook his head. “Don’t care nothing about the credit. You say it’s all your doing, if you want. Won’t say otherwise. Say you got a bonus on your job, and this is what you’re doing with it. Don’t care. Just want it done, for them, and done right. You tell me what’s to be done and what the cost is, I’ll see it gets paid. Add on a reasonable percentage for yourself, for your time and professional expertise. Whatever the customary rate would be. I figure you know, or can find out. Won’t dispute none of the charges with you, so long as I get them in writing. Reasonable estimates beforehand, that I can OK. I got some specifications I want met, but except for that, it’s your call, in consultation with Buffy, on account of it’s her house.”  
  
“What specifications?”  
  
Spike pushed a paper across the desk. “There’s some new glass come out. Called ‘necro-tempered.’ Sun through it doesn’t bother me. Want all the windows made of it, starting with the kitchen and Buffy’s bedroom. Won’t need all the windows covered then, living in the dark on my account. Dunno who makes it, where it’s to be found. Kind of a specialized market, I’d expect.” Pointing at the paper, Spike explained, “That number will reach somebody who knows Oz, and Oz speaks well of. She knows where a retro-fit car place is, that used it. Refitted Oz’s whole van with it. From that, you should be able to get back to a supplier.”  
  
“Doable,” Xander conceded. Folding up the paper, he put it in his shirt pocket.  
  
“Next, before you start shopping for materials, I want you to get together with Red. Some materials are more magic-proof than others. And if they’re custom anyway, might be something could be added to make them stronger in that way. Or added before they’re installed. Specially the inside doors. Maybe something could be put into hollow-core, if hollow-core will do. Outside doors should be solid. But there’s a choice of woods, paint. Again, maybe things could be added to paint, to make it magic-repellant. What metal is best, magic-wise, for the window frames, hardware. Passive protection, built in. Go through it all with her, bottom line being to make the house self-sufficient. Not depend on Red renewing the spells every week or so. Make it safe against anything that could reasonably be thrown at it. Including fire. Facing fire mages now, it seems. So an escape tunnel straight into the sewer line would be a good idea, if it can be dug from below, nothing showing.”  
  
Xander was nodding as the points were specified. “All possible. Makes sense. Except you didnt hear me say that.”  
  
“Like I said, I don’t care to score points with this. Just want it done, the best way it can be done. Execution’s up to you. Parts where simple unskilled labor will do, I’ll provide whatever vamps you think will be enough. Like that escape tunnel, maybe. Can dust ‘em afterwards, so no chance of the word getting out.”  
  
“You’re talking pharaoh’s tomb security here.”  
  
“Something like. It’s disposable labor, and I figure you got no problem with dusting vamps.”  
  
“None whatever. I’ll keep it in mind. I haven’t yet seen the downside of this,” Xander admitted, and his scent confirmed his expression and his words.  
  
“Good. Don’t believe there is any. And one last thing.”  
  
“Here comes the downside.” Wariness, again; and disappointment. So he’d bought into the basic idea.  
  
“No, just a hair personal,” Spike replied. “Down in the basement, there’s a bed. Want it unbolted, disassembled, and moved to the far side of the basement. Set up there, bolted down again. Where the washer and the sink are. Means re-plumbing that part, to move the washer and what’s there now. That part of the basement closed off with a new wall and a door. Soundproofed, like a recording studio. Fixed up nice--carpet and everything. Lights that come on, but you can dial ‘em down to next to nothing, and you can’t see ‘em.”  
  
“Recessed.”  
  
Spike nodded. “’F that’s what you call it. Fitted up so it’s always warm there. And a full bath adjoining. Nice tub, down in the floor. Maybe other stuff I’ll think of, along the way. You don’t consult Buffy on that. That’s mine. Best if it could all be done in a couple of days--a weekend, maybe. Bring everybody in, do the work, and out.”  
  
He and Xander traded stares, both of them likely knowing exactly what that new room was gonna be used for.  
  
“And if Buffy asks?” Xander said finally.  
  
“Then you show her. That part, you’ll have to say it’s my idea. My doing. ‘F you don’t want to explain, I suggest you figure out the best way to do it when she’s not apt to notice. If you need her away for awhile, a day or two, you let me know. I expect that can be arranged.”  
  
“Ahuh. But what if she sees it and says no?”  
  
“That’s not up to you. You tell me, or send her to me, and I’ll deal with it.”  
  
“All right. That seems legitimate, since it’s your money and her house.”  
  
“Till that whole thing can be done, take the bed apart and store it someplace. Out of the way. Out of her sight. Cover it up with something, I don’t care.”  
  
What Spike felt about the bed fiasco, yesterday, was way past disappointment. But he’d shut it away. Made it part of another job, to be dealt with in its turn. By somebody else.  
  
It’d been the shackles, he was certain, that had put Buffy off. Except for that, it would have been OK.  
  
He wouldn't always need the shackles and manacles to feel she was protected when his demon came out to play and got a little overenthusiastic; a little heedless of the necessary care that had to be taken with a human, even the Slayer--not well defended at such times. Not on her guard against him. Vulnerable.  
  
Mostly, when he wasn't stressed out about twenty other things, he could manage his demon well enough. Turn loose the way he needed to and no harm done, both of them well content and at good peace with each other. So this dead end they'd hit wasn't forever. Turn away, take a different direction, and go on. Look toward a later convergence, farther along.  
  
Everything he was doing now was for the long haul. For what, properly put in place and set going, would last. Get through the bad patches however he had to and look to final result.  
  
He told Xander, “The tunnel, though, that comes first. ‘Cause that’s a known danger, right now. ‘F you can use grunt labor, point and say ‘dig,’ you let me know and I’ll see you get it.”  
  
Xander drummed his fingers on the desktop. “You’re talking major money here, you know. Thousands of dollars, even if I donate my time.”  
  
“I know. Have to cost up the parts, do it piecemeal. There’s five thousand, to start. That’s the current kitty. There’ll be more as I can get more. Do the highest priority things first, and the cheapest. Put off whatever’s optional and pricey. Stagger it out. Come back with a schedule, maybe, in a couple days, after you talked it out with Willow, and maybe I can help tick off what needs to be first and what can wait.”  
  
Xander stood up. “All right.” Leveling a finger at Spike’s chest, he added, “Remember, I’m not doing this for you: it’s for Buffy.”  
  
“No argument.”  
  
“And the basement sex pit, that’s last.”  
  
“Agreed. Get the bed gone, though.”  
  
“With pleasure!”  
  
After Xander left, Spike went into the desk drawers for the pain-killers, made sure that was what they were, and swallowed four. Then he lit a cigarette and went back to the translation. Stupid bit about the exact procedure for raising a fire elemental he was having trouble working out. Verb tenses were iffy in Socha, so it was hard to be sure what was done in what order. Wrong order could take out, conservatively, a city block: elementals were vain and touchy, didn't like being bothered, and would take it out on their summoner, given the least flaw in the procedure. Maybe he could find another version of the spell in the C.O.W. archives and cross reference. Sometimes there was more than one way around, instead of beating your head against the blank wall and hoping something would give.  
  
He was content that the Casa Summers project was well begun. It had been on his mind a long time--months. And always had Harris in mind for it, a natural fit. Always good to deal with somebody who knew his job, knew more about it than you did, and was reasonably reliable. Like Willow. Should be making more use of contractors, delegate things off and let them go, only need to check on them from time to time. Not all of it depending on him. Needed infrastructure, needed a proper court, not just the vamp equivalent of a raiding party.  
  
Should be making provision for the education of the fledges he’d been palming off on Digger as he found them. Maybe assign Mike to judge which were promising and which would be a dead loss no matter what anybody did. Good practice for Mike, and Spike would be able to judge the result. Put that on the agenda.  
  
**********  
  
Some while after his conversation with Harris, Spike heard someone approaching, entering.  
  
For the first instant, getting no contrary signals, he thought it was Kennedy, and said, “Get onto Huey. Want to see him before dark. He….”  
  
Something about the silence alerted him. He looked up, frowning to focus, and it was Dawn. She did a little finger wave, smiling. Said, “Hi.”  
  
Pink Saturday corduroy overalls over a yellow top with stitched daisies he’d bought for her at the mall. And a fuzzy pink sweater she was carrying. All matching and proper.  
  
For a second, he hoped. But the smell was off. And the expression of her eyes wasn’t right. And it was all, all wrong in too many ways for him to put names to. He did a quick head-shake, refusing the imposture, and irritably fished out a cigarette.  
  
Without being invited, she sat primly in one of the visitors’ chairs and laid the sweater on the desk like a small dead animal. “You don’t greet me. Yet that’s customary.” She waited a moment, then said, “You don’t respond.”  
  
“None of that was a question, your highnesshood or whatever the hell you like being called.” He lit the cigarette and set the lighter down on the desktop with a precise little _click_.  
  
“A question was implied, however.”  
  
“I’m a vamp. I don’t do implied. What d’you want? Notice--that’s a question.”  
  
“What makes you think I want anything? Doesn’t Dawn come visit you from time to time?”  
  
Spike drew in smoke, shut his eyes, and held his temper. Wouldn’t do any good to make her mad. And it was pushing toward noon, and he was in bad headache mode now: about ready to chuck it all in for today, let the headache bleed off while he slept. Didn’t matter if he wasted a little time on the bint.  
  
“Not lately. Wouldn’t mind if she could visit now. For instance.”  
  
“That might be permitted,” Lady Gates responded. “If you’re cooperative.”  
  
Eyes still shut, Spike considered that very seriously. Dawn a hostage to his good behavior, released as a reward and bait for more of the same. Hell with it. He’d take anything he could get. He looked at her. “Dawn first, cooperate later. Otherwise, bugger off. ‘M busy here.”  
  
“Rudeness,” Lady Gates mused. “How interesting. So much variety of response. Very well, I have no objection Spike! You got to get me out of this!” She flung herself around the desk at him, banging the monitor and knocking piled papers off the edge, and he didn’t give a damn either, because he was both holding on and holding off, not quite sure this wasn’t another try at imposture.  
  
Pointing at the back of his left hand, he demanded, “What’s this?”  
  
Barely touching, her fingertip traced the beginning of the spiral tattoo, the green verse. “Your promise. But she could know that too, so that’s no good.”  
  
Spike pulled her in against his shoulder, swiveling the chair so she slid up onto his lap. “No, Bit. She could know what it is, but not what it means. That’s ours. May not have much time here. Is she hurting you?”  
  
“No,” Dawn admitted reluctantly, “but I’m hella bored! _You_ should understand that! And she’s wearing my favorite clothes! It’s awful! And why’s Buffy all snappish and weepy and miserable? What have you done now?”  
  
“Been dumb, is all. Like always. Bit, you know anything yet of how I can keep you here?”  
  
She turned around to look at him, her eyes bright and flashing. “Not yet, but I’m on the hunt, promise. It’s open both ways, and there’s a lot to hunt through. She’s never done this before, but I’ve always been me, so that gives me an advantage. I can skinny through better than she can cramp in. When I know, I’ll tell you somehow, promise.” Her look turned sly. “I could do a lot of damage up there if I wanted. No locks, Spike! Except I don’t dare spread too thin, or else…I might forget I’m me.”  
  
“Don’t you do that, then. You sit small and wait. We’ll work it out somehow. Don’t you risk yourself.” He kissed her forehead and took in her good smell, coming off her. Took awhile, he guessed, for it to gather and build. And then saw her eyes and pitched her away, as violently as if he’d found a snake in his lap. The poison couldn’t hurt him, but it was still nothing you wanted to find yourself cozying up to.  
  
“Might give a bloke some warning,” he complained, swiveling away to have a second to control his disappointment, his sense of loss.  
  
“Why are you so attached to the child?” Lady Gates inquired, behind him. “Perhaps she has power, and she’s brought leverage to bear at least once on your behalf. Yet you’ve never attempted to call on that. Why not?”  
  
Spike shrugged, turning back toward her, collecting the cigarette smoldering on the desktop. “Not wearing an amulet. Not blocking you from seeing whatever you please. You want to know, go ahead and look.” He folded his arms.  
  
“Value,” she commented slowly, “is a subjective thing. It’s value in a context. Within parameters. Defined by viewpoint and perspective. I can scan what you see…but the value you put on it is…peculiar.”  
  
Spike shrugged. “Vamps are peculiar. What with being dead an’ all.”  
  
“Don’t be dense: peculiar in the sense of individual. Particular. What an imprecise language this is!” Changing gears abruptly, she demanded, “What are you doing about the Fire Mages?”  
  
“Bugger all. Not my department. You want to talk magic claptrap, you cozy up to Red.”  
  
“But you know magic is real, and effective. You’ve had it used as a weapon against you. And you yourself have used it in the past. How can you afford to be so ignorant and dismissive of it?”  
  
Spike gave her a level look. “I pick my fights. Magic, that’s a knife that cuts in all directions. Goddam buzzsaw. An’ you have to _want_ it. Or the results, anyway. Clear and straight and strong enough to follow all the forms precisely and to the letter. About as much fun as doing income tax. Not been many times I wanted anything that much…or that way. And what I’ve seen tells me you never use magic: it uses you. Not real keen on being used.”  
  
“I’d noticed.”  
  
He let that pass. “’F these mages get sat on, shut up for good an’ all, will you be satisfied? Go back where you came from and let Bit be?”  
  
“That’s not the point. You should be as much opposed to reopening the Hellmouth as we are. After all, your little exercise in kingdom-building would collapse, and quickly, with an influx of demons with no reason to respect your authority. You must know that! But…I see you don’t care. You know it. Yet it means very little to you. Why is that?”  
  
“I deal with the part I can understand. Know how it’s going and which way it’s likely to jump. The rest, that’s somebody else’s to see to. You want to send me dreams, pictures, lay it all out who needs killing to stop this, I’ll maybe see my way to it. Like I did before. But I’m my own. I don’t serve you or circumstances. As best I can, I choose.”  
  
“Yes, yes, yes: _non serviam_. We’ve had this conversation before.”  
  
“Not my fault we’re havin’ it again, now is it? You hear, but you don’t like it, so you don’t take it in. Like me and magic. Like Buffy an’ vamps, except she’s got a little better about that, seems like. Can hold onto a name, oh, at least a minute and a half before it’s gone again.” Then he was angry, to have said anything critical of Buffy in the hearing of this creature. Mouth in gear, head disengaged. Typical. He stubbed the cigarette out. “Right now, there’s nothing more important to me than getting Dawn back the way she should be. Would let this all go smash, like you wanted, if that’s what it took.”  
  
“Really?” Lady Gates smiled. “If I promise to withdraw, restore Dawn, you’ll abandon being Master of Sunnydale?”  
  
“Not promise: do. Then we’ll see.”  
  
Lady Gates smiled even more broadly. Dawn had a good mouth for that, when it was Dawn running things. Nobody had a better smile. This wasn’t it. “What,” inquired Lady Gates, “became of the promised cooperation?”  
  
“This is it. Haven’t chucked you out, have I? Still talking, aren’t we?”  
  
“I already knew you were annoying. There’s no need to reiterate it.”  
  
“Haven’t begun to be annoying. For instance: here you are, in the body of a child of sixteen. Limited to that. What if I just up and bust both your legs? Get you stuck in bed for a couple months. Casts and bedpans and crutches. Traction, maybe. How would you like that? How long would you put up with it before you bailed?”  
  
“You wouldn’t. You’d be doing it to Dawn.”  
  
“Bit, she’d understand. She’d tell me, ‘Go ahead and _do_ it!’ I _know_ Bit. Right ruthless, she is, when it’s called for. She’d chalk it up to necessary damage, and bitch at me some, but underneath she’d be purely glad to get you gone. An’ if you don’t see that, you don’t see anything at all. I been real patient with you so far. Real polite. You give me reason to be otherwise, I’ll _be_ otherwise. And won’t be me who regrets it. No soul here: remember? So if getting rid of those Fire Mages is the key, I’d be real busy about that if I were you instead of putting me behind in my translation.”  
  
“I could unmake you,” said Lady Gates coldly.  
  
“Not from there, you can’t. You’re playing on my ground now, and I know the rules a hell of a lot better than you do. And so does Bit. You listen to her awhile and see if that’s not true. Now get out before you put me behind schedule.”  
  
“Really? I didn’t realize you ran on clockwork. What’s so important, that’s on your schedule?”  
  
Spike shut off the computer the way you weren’t supposed to, with the switch. Didn’t matter: he had everything saved down. Then he turned out the light, which would leave her blind, except for the little strip of light that came through the gap in the barricade. He pushed the chair back from the desk, rose, and flopped down on the cot, loud enough that she could hear each motion. Then, effortlessly and immediately, with the satisfaction of having set two more things running under adequate supervision, he shut himself down and was asleep.  
  
**********  
  
It was dumb to feel shy. It was dumb to feel blinding, murderous jealousy of Huey, who watched him warily while Spike talked to him and not to Mike. Stood there in the office like the goddam fucking bookkeeper he was, greasy fair hair tied back in a tail like a goddam hippy, face all angular and closed like he’d laugh if he dared. Dumb to feel awkward and oversized, like he couldn’t move and not knock into something, like he’d just bumped a pile of papers onto the floor and admit, yes, had to go down on his knees and pick the fucking things up, paw them into a pile, and set them back on the desk again, Spike not letting on he took any notice like he didn’t know or didn’t care Mike was standing there, glowering, in his T-shirt that read _I will so fuck your shit UP!_ which was probably dumb too, but that was how he’d felt, waking, taking the call, hearing Spike’s voice telling him he was needed. Felt like he could fuck anybody’s shit up, stomp into the ground anybody Spike pointed him at, get the bike and roar over, and here’s fucking Huey practically laughing at him, evidently needed more, wanted more, being told what to do and nodding while Mike stood aside and waited like a goddam fucking moron in a stupid shirt.  
  
Wasn’t Huey’s sire. Never let goddam Huey feed from him, or at least he better not have or Huey was gone, was dust. Sleek beautiful Spike, all silver and quicksilver, who’d made him take the watch back and given him the pocket phone, who Mike would never never betray no matter what Digger did or said, dust Digger first and he’d offered but Spike had said no, Digger was needed for the fledges, so Mike figured he had to let the old lizard be for this while though that was dangerous, dangerous, hell with the fledges, better to have the fucking old spider gone, with his big froggy mouth and his goddam wheedling.  
  
“Michael.” Spike was talking to him. Had taken notice of him, finally. Mike sullenly consented to show he was listening. “Asked Huey, here, to quit over at Willy’s and be up here full time, to run this show.”  
  
“I could do that,” Mike mentioned.  
  
“An’ dress up in a tutu and a tiara, keep the troops amused, and if you tell me you’d do that, too, we’ll all know what a fucking idiot you are, now won’t we?”  
  
“Tell you what I think of that. When he’s not here.”  
  
“Need you for other things,” Spike commented easily, like the whole earth didn’t hang by that, thrummed and resounding like a touched guitar string, the one note, the one focus. Spike glanced up at Huey, the glance a question and Huey’s nod the response, all so fucking intimate like no words needed between them, everything understood when Mike didn’t understand anything except how much he wanted, now that he’d had a taste. Wanted more. Wanted all. Never could be enough that he wouldn’t want more.  
  
As Huey left, sent off about his business, Spike smiled at Mike, still all easy. Collected. Distant. Mike wanted to hit him a good one to make him come out of that distance and truly attend. Didn’t do it because then Spike might not love him anymore, the most terrifying thought there could be. So Mike just stood there like a lump, waiting to be told what he should do so Spike would still love him. Stupid. Who’d ever want to love a dumbass stupid needy lump like he was?  
  
Should be all cool distance, like Spike was. Tried. Failed miserably. Tried to fake it anyway, hold himself still. Spike was contemptuous of whoever couldn’t control their demon. So he’d do that, or at least not let on different, though the demon was begging, groveling for acknowledgement, approval. Didn’t mean Mike had to.  
  
Still smiling, Spike remarked quietly, “You’re still an idiot, Michael,” and it wasn’t so bad with nobody else to hear, and it was Spike noticing him, so it wasn’t really bad at all.  
  
“Yeah,” Mike admitted, hanging his head. “I guess.”  
  
“But you’re my idiot and some of this will ease back for you, once the new wears off. Be easy with yourself, lad.”  
  
Not looking up, Mike asked, “What do I need to do to earn another taste? Not much, just a taste.”  
  
“Nothing whatever. Don’t have to earn it. Whenever you need it. Not for what you do. For what you are. Mine. Claimed and named.”  
  
“Not marked, though.”  
  
Spike chuckled, which at the same time made Mike furious and wildly happy. “Well now, wouldn’t that start talk. Marked you half a dozen times already, feeding from you, you loon.”  
  
“Marks all healed smooth, you know that. Don't last. And it wasn't for me. Just on account of I’d had some of Dawn’s blood and you’d take it that way. Not for me at all.”  
  
“Sometime, maybe. You got to grow into this. Or out of this, I’m not sure which. How’d your date with Lady Power go, tell me?”  
  
Mike muttered, “Need it now.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Need it now. Just a taste, for remembering.”  
  
“Want’s not need. Give you awhile, you’ll know the difference. At least some of the time. Wake up now, Michael, and report. Tell me how Lady Power liked the movie.”  
  
“Couldn’t make head nor tail of it,” Mike recollected slowly. “Me neither, but I didn’t care. You paid, not me. Popcorn tastes like nothing. No taste at all. Don’t know why anybody pays money for it. Explosions were nice, though grenades don’t go like that, with sparks and everything.”  
  
“Poetic license.”  
  
“No, special effects. It’s how they do because they can’t show the guts, not with that rating. Got to show something, so pretty colors and sparks. Metaphorical. She talked through the whole thing. We had to move to the back, everybody trying to shush her but she wouldn’t take no notice. Asking about the why of everything, not the what. Wondering why nobody didn’t use magic to get out of things, and not a witch in sight. Wasn’t no magic in the movie world, but she wouldn’t believe that, just thought they were dumb. Didn’t do much of a job explaining to her but the best I could. Didn’t even hit her once because you said. And anyway it was partly Dawn, and Dawn would get me after if I did. You said she’d know.”  
  
“Expect so. She was here a little while, this morning. Bit. She’s pissed off, of course, but hopeful. It’s home to her, after all. She’s not like us. Do you begin to see that, a little?”  
  
Mike nodded unhappily. “She didn’t come out for me. All that while. Not even on the bike, and she loves the bike, Dawn does. Why’d she come out for you, and not for me?”  
  
“Lady Gates, she’s still angling for a good handle on me, so she hangs out the bait every now and again. Works, too: hard to see her, then lose her, between one blink and the next…. Still, I expect you had the better evening of it, of the pair of us.”  
  
“Figured.”  
  
Spike shot him a look. “Why?”  
  
“About the first time I can’t smell her on you. Chains, that’s generally a bad idea, except with vamps. Could have told you that. Spooks ‘em.” Waking up, bleary as a fledge, he'd been sent to inspect, see the job was all to specifications. Wondered about it quite a bit, after--how it'd gone. Seemed more than iffy, to him; but not his call. And no chance to check back, afterward, till now. No need to ask: smell was sufficient. Mostly, you always knew who'd been fucking who recently, not that it meant much to anybody but Spike. He was peculiar that way.  
  
“Yeah, well. You know how it is--have to find everything out for yourself, first-hand, or it doesn’t sink in proper. Telling’s no use. Got to learn everything the hard way. Me the same as you. All vamps alike, that way.”  
  
“Just a taste.”  
  
“No, and leave off about it. It’s embarrassing, Michael. And s’not a thing for everyday. Only for special. And the looking forward is a part of it.”  
  
“Don’t like the looking forward. Hell with it.”  
  
“Then you’ll just have to learn to appreciate it, won’t you? Like I'm doing," Spike added sourly, and at once changed the subject. "Got a bunch of volunteers, want to wear the colors, lined up outside.”  
  
“Yeah. Saw ‘em. Scruffy bunch.”  
  
“Kept ‘em waiting a couple hours now, get them up on their toes, those that are worth anything. Want you to sort through ‘em for me--which ones you figure are teachable and which ones are a waste of the space. Sheep and goats. Could use ‘em all if they all suit. Don’t want none that will be more trouble than they’re worth, have to be watching ‘em every second. Don’t want none gonna run from a fight or can’t take punishment without a grudge after. But you sort ‘em however you think is best, for what’s gonna be needed from them. Don’t dust none of the ones you don’t choose. Come back and tell me, and I’ll have a look. See how you done. All right?”  
  
“I can do that!”  
  
“Do it, then. And afterward, gonna take ‘em on a sweep, pass through Digger’s territory.”  
  
Mike went all alert. “He know about this?”  
  
“Not yet, he doesn’t.”  
  
“Might be mistaken. For an attack.”  
  
“Don’t think there’ll be any mistake. None that can’t be handled. Gonna consider the fledges he’s been collecting over there. They’re gonna need teaching, and not just from Digger. He don’t know but to work ‘em to starvation, then shove 'em all out into the morning before he'll let the rest feed, those that can fight their way back in before they dust. Lose a good half of ‘em that way, that might have been useful, fed up and encouraged somewhat. You know how he does: did you that way, except you were one of the lucky ones. Want my pick of the unluckies before shove time comes. You up for that?”  
  
“You know I am.”  
  
“Just giving you the option, is all. Get going then. Let me know when you done the sort, and we’ll go on from there.”  
  
“Taste after, maybe? If I do good?”  
  
Spike laughed and gave him a backhand cuff in the belly, which was what Mike had expected and wanted, and it was nearly as good.  
  
**********  
  
When Mike had divided the prospects, he went back and told Spike, who returned with him to the factory floor to inspect the result: eight, somewhat bruised, to one side, and a glum fourteen to the other--the rejects. Three of the fourteen flat out on the floor but not dusted, because that had been the instructions. And Amanda off to the side, well away from both groups, talking to Huey who was also keeping an eye on her in case somebody got impatient.  
  
The rest of Spike’s crew lounging variously roundabout, in the colors, looking on.  
  
“All right,” Spike said, “tell me how you sorted.”  
  
Confident of his method and in fact quite pleased with himself, Mike explained. First he’d set aside all the hopeful fledges. Well, actually, first he’d called ‘Manda, who’d mostly do what he said, and her being so homely, seemed a good bet she wouldn’t have a date or anything, of a Saturday night.  
  
Spike flashed a look to ‘Manda, sighed and lifted a hand, not exactly a wave. She nodded, all purse-mouthed and annoyed. Mike didn’t know what that was about, figured he didn’t care, and rolled on.  
  
With the fledges set aside and the rest ordered to maintain human face, Mike had sent Amanda strolling past them a fair way off--past striking distance. Any that couldn’t hold and went for her, they were out. Also any that lapsed back to trueface, even if they didn’t budge. Then he sent her past again, closer. Same rules. A few more rejected, same reasons, but a bit more forcefully because three came at her in a bunch and Mike had to hammer them down before they could get at her too bad. And ‘Manda took out a pair with her taser, that Mike had made sure she’d brought with her. All the vamps bare-handed, of course. But no vamp could ever be truly disarmed. Even a fledge was more than a match for most humans.  
  
SITs could be risked, up to what they could be reasonably expected to handle, but not wasted. SITs were valuable, Mike forgot exactly why. But he’d taken good care, all the same.  
  
Spike nodded neutrally, still looking the prospects over. “Then what?”  
  
“Roughed up the rest, told them to stand and take it. Ones that came back at me, I put down. They were out. Then told what was left to come at me. One hung back. She was out, too. So.” Mike waved at the eight, who’d come through the testing in good shape. Though Mike was certain he’d made a good sort, he was more nervous than he hoped he looked, waiting for Spike’s approval.  
  
Spike first went and talked to Huey for a few minutes. Mike watched anxiously, wishing he knew what they were saying. Returning, Spike summoned one of the women fledges, and she came to him promptly, head high, silently waiting. A flip of Spike’s hand sent her to join the eight.  
  
“She was at the class,” Spike explained. “Did what she was told in good order. An’ was up here every night before that, wanting to get in. Willing to do housekeeping, which we’re in sore need of. Worth giving her a try.”  
  
Mike nodded impassively, understanding that his choice wasn’t being criticized, just adjusted on account of different information he hadn’t had.  
  
Spike selected two more rejects, one that Huey’d seen in a fight at Willy’s and thought well of, and the other a woman, the one who’d hung back in the free-for-all. Spike picked her because she knew music and could play blues harmonica, which Mike considered bizarre, though he didn’t say so.  
  
“Starting a court, here,” Spike commented, throwing a glance up at him. “More to that than fucking and fighting.”  
  
“If you say,” responded Mike agreeably.  
  
Then Spike pulled out two of the approved group and sent them to the rejects. One was a whiner, Spike said, and the other was “a mean son of a bitch” and troublemaker Spike didn’t want to have anything to do with. “Now that lot,” Spike said, lighting a cigarette and gesturing at the rejects with it, “you can leave to fend for themselves, masterless. Or you can keep ‘em. For yours. All the districts need bulking up. Fledges, they might be teachable: too soon to tell. An’ the hopeless gits, well, they’re the goats. Let the rest practice on ‘em till they’re used up. Or I might take ‘em off your hands later for a project I got running, not quite to the stage to use ‘em yet. Bit of digging. Anyway, your call.”  
  
Mike got the strong impression Spike wanted him to take them. He wished Spike would just say so, flat out, so he’d know what to do. Putting it as a choice meant he might choose wrong. But then again, taking ‘em didn’t oblige Mike to anything, really: could always turn ‘em out or dust ‘em later. Spike had made plain that District Masters didn’t have to give account to him for internal matters. Could do as they pleased in that respect.  
  
“All right. OK if I send Benny to show them where to go?”  
  
“Benny’s gone.”  
  
“Oh. Deuce, then.” Mike read that answer in Spike’s face and made a point of looking around, to see who actually was left. “Mary?”  
  
“Yeah, all right.”  
  
“Must have been some party,” Mike commented, after giving Mary her marching orders. “Pity I missed it.”  
  
“Yeah.” Spike pitched the butt and stepped on it in a way that let Mike know the subject of the mass culling wasn’t something Spike wanted to talk about. Walking off, he said, “Get them kitted out, so we’ll know who’s ours and who’s not. Huey, show them the spare gear.”  
  
“Women, too?” Mike called after him.  
  
“Everybody. Gonna run a sweep.”  
  
Regulars and recruits, they were twenty-two strong when everybody was set. Too many for the one car they had, the junkheap old Ford sedan that was nobody’s now. One of the newbies, called himself “Bingo,” had to tinker it to get it started, the keys having been lost when the car’s owner got dusted. Lots of subtle reminders, like the smell of the “spare” shirts the newbies were wearing and the way the regulars minded orders immediately and kept well wide of Spike. That last, likely a good thing. Mike kept close. And so was disappointed when Spike detailed him to run the newbies through the pipes to the mark while the regulars rode. Good to get them acquainted with the belowground ways, though, he supposed.  
  
The mark was the parking lot of the Vons supermarket on Beloit, used to be a Safeway but got eaten, at the eastern edge of downtown. By the time Mike got there, the regulars had already been sent on their sweep: checking for the smell, as he and Spike had done, Thursday night. Mike wouldn’t forget that sweep anytime soon….  
  
Spike introduced the newbies to the smell with one of the last of the tiny sample bottles. Then he passed out stakes and divided them into two groups with himself and Mike as the leads, and they made a start at teaching the newbies about lead and second, flanking, and moving together as a loose unit, on opposite sides of the street.  
  
Skirmishers, as Mike thought of it.  
  
A slightly different formation and attention range because they were all vamps and none of them armed with rifles or any distance weapons, so they could see and sense at a much greater range than they could take action. A lot of casting about: more like a pack of hounds seeking a trail than like a squad moving toward a known objective. No need to move from cover to cover, either. All of them right out in the open at an easy lope. Fast enough to cover ground quickly and not miss anything, not a full-out run that would draw attention in a suburban neighborhood.  
  
But the variations were slight and the whole flow of movement and attention so habitual to Mike, from the life before, that he was at once aware of anybody falling behind or going off on their own, any departure from the set parameters, and corrected it with a word or a blow when a word didn’t bring instant obedience. Or on general principles, to enforce his authority.  
  
Vamp dominance games, Mike thought, and smiled. He liked them. Because he mostly won. Except for Spike, and that was as it should be. Some day he’d take Spike, too; but he knew he wouldn’t be fit for another try for some time yet. A few of the deeper bruises from his last try still gave the occasional twinge when he moved wrong or reached too suddenly.  
  
All in its own time, and in good order.  
  
One of the newbies caught the smell and signaled with a lifted hand, like a hound going to point. Mike whistled high, and Spike’s squad veered to follow. Mike sent the newbie ahead to point position, as a scout. The smell took them to a drug store. Point and two flankers went in while the rest waited outside. When it got to five minutes, Spike named a new mark, a gas station, and took his squad on. Point and flankers came out shortly after, locked onto a woman and two teenaged-girls obliviously chatting together. Mike’s squad shadowed them to a new green Plymouth Fury. Took out a vamp who made a move on the trio--quick and clean, dusted before they’d noticed anything, still chatting. Followed the Fury on home--no problem staying with a car doing well under the 35 mph speed limit--and saw them safely inside, no further incident. A couple of vamps on the street, a little way down, but they stayed clear and Mike let them be.  
  
He called the point man aside, asked his name.  
  
“Len. Sir.”  
  
“Military.” Wasn’t a question: Mike already knew.  
  
“Yessir. Nam. Then some freelance.”  
  
“Ahuh. Age?”  
  
“Coming on eighteen. Sir.”  
  
Mike took good note of the vamp’s appearance and smell. Three times Mike’s age, since being turned. Mike supposed that made him something like a baby lieutenant. “Rules are a little different, Len. You call me by my name. But when we’re on a sweep, or on the hunt, I’m God.”  
  
Len smiled comfortably. “Got that, sir. Mike.”  
  
“Naming you second, for tonight. You watch my signs and do well, you’ll stay there. Mess up, and you’re in with the goats, like Spike said. If I don’t get peeved and dust you myself. All clear?”  
  
“Clear, sir.”  
  
“Lead out, then. The mark’s the Exxon station at Grandview.” Looking around at the squad, Mike added, “Anybody catches the smell, make a sign.”  
  
One of the squad, a woman, the fledge from the class, asked, “When do we hunt?”  
  
“When Spike says,” Mike answered shortly. As the squad moved out, Mike moved alongside her, again noting appearance and smell. “How old?”  
  
“Not quite a year. I was in college. Got caught--” She stopped herself, maybe realizing her history was of less than no interest.  
  
“Name?”  
  
“Jenna.”  
  
“You’re on the bubble, Jenna. I culled you out, Spike put you back. You’ll be seen to in due course. Nobody will starve in this crew. Watch your mouth. Won’t tell you twice.”  
  
“Yes. OK. Clear.”  
  
Mike let himself drop back to rearguard position, watching how they moved, attending to his sense of vamps hunting roundabout, the abrupt sunburst flare of bloodsmell as one made a kill. He noted which in the squad reacted to it and which didn’t. Jenna nearly broke formation, then steadied. She’d need to feed tonight. Have to make provision for that. But Spike would know. No need to bother about it himself.  
  
Mike liked sweeps. Better with an all-out fight, but good regardless. Knowing clearly what he was about, what the objective was, how to think and do. All that taken care of. Feeling that he fit, belonged. Everything simple.  
  
Meeting at the mark, Spike asked him where Digger’s newest excavation and shoring were apt to be. Mike told him. Spike named that as the mark and they all went to it. In the open, aboveground, no attempt whatever at stealth.  
  
Digger didn’t put out sentries, as such. But his people were on the hunt throughout the district, his own territory, and seeing a bunch of vamps moving together, in force, they’d send out an alarm. Mike caught the high, warbling signal rise and repeat, close and distant. Not the signal for a lone poacher or two but with the sudden drop-off deeper end-tone that signaled attack. Digger never changed his signals: Mike knew them all.  
  
If he heard it, Spike heard it. Had therefore figured on it. So it must be all right. Even though the signal was repeating from many directions, roundabout.  
  
The entrance here was in a cemetery, Shady Rest--a crypt labeled MORRIS. A bunch of vamps spilled out of it, far more than the crypt could have contained. They mostly had shovels. A few stakes, poles, sharpened baseball bats: weaponry kept by the entrance, to be snatched up at need.  
  
Passing the graveyard entrance, Spike said, “Any with dirty hands, put ‘em down, keep ‘em down. Hurt ‘em, all right. Don’t stake ‘em.”  
  
“Right,” Mike responded. When the squads stayed mum, Mike directed harshly, “If you heard, sing out!”  
  
That roused a muttered, nervous chorus of “Right” from both squads.  
  
Mike knew to take the right and moved through his squad fast to take them that way. The two groups closed. More vamps came in from behind and around but there was no signal to bring them in, so they stayed clear, sensed but not seen for the most part.  
  
The dirty-handed fledges fought frantically. Knew they wouldn’t be allowed back inside if they didn’t. Mike took on the ones with the shovels, that had sharpened edges, could behead a vamp if you didn’t look out for them. Left the squads to deal with the stakes and other miscellaneous weaponry. If you didn’t want ‘em staked, had to get ‘em disarmed or the stakes would be used against them. There were some accidents of that sort--lost harmonica-girl that way: dusted, gone--because the fighting was completely disorganized, a free-for-all brawl, the squad not dividing into fighting units, lead and second, like they should. Hadn’t been taught that yet. Except Mike noticed Len had snagged himself a couple of seconds, was doing the fledges more methodically: take one down, leave the seconds to finish, single out another and do the same, while others were stupidly struggling hand to hand by pairs or random threes, back and forth across the ground.  
  
Numbers had started about even, but with Spike briskly putting fledges down with a baseball bat, an economical swat to the head or face and move on as they fell, Mike doing what he was, and Len effectively putting down another every minute or so, wasn’t long before the remainder of the two squads were the only ones still standing.  
  
“Howdy, Spike.” Digger was leaning in the crypt door, fussing at his nails with his preferred weapon, a wickedly long knife. “To what do we owe this honor?”  
  
“Hullo, Digger,” Spike responded, turning, casually brushing dust off his thighs. “Wanted to have a look at the fledges you been collecting. Sorry lot, I must say.”  
  
“They’re eating me out of house and home, the fuckers. Thought that was the idea, you sending ‘em to me in wholesale bunches, rile up the whole district, feeding ‘em. Presents. Like the sacred elephants get sent to enemies, bankrupt ‘em with the upkeep.”  
  
“Oh, I dunno, we been getting on well enough, last few days, anyhow. How it goes. And I figured you’d have no problem with the upkeep. Always been thrifty about that, I’m told.”  
  
“Howdy, Mike,” said Digger, and Mike nodded inattentively, counting heads, motioning the squads back into something like formation in case Digger called in the vamps roundabout to make a real fight of it.  
  
“You always got a use for fledges,” Spike remarked. “And you’re short-handed. Figured you had the most need of ‘em, of the districts.”  
  
“Not quite so short-handed as I was,” Digger replied pointedly, looking around into the dark. “Been working on that, since you cut me back to cow-tenders and the household help, ‘bout a week back.”  
  
“Good on you, then. Wouldn’t have expected less. Now you got ‘em all broke in, culled the ones needed culling, thought I’d take a few back off your roster. Got a job of work coming up, needs extra hands. I’m not particular. Don’t need ‘em for fighting, which is a good thing, since they made a pretty pathetic show of it. Leave you the best, take the rest.”  
  
“Got no objection to that,” Digger decided slowly, after a moment’s consideration. “Ain’t got that much invested in ‘em, by way of food. Always glad to oblige.”  
  
Spike laughed, then sobered. “You fledges, stand up.”  
  
Mike moved quickly to Sue, that he’d spotted during the fight. He set his hand on her shoulder and leaned hard when she tried to rise against it. She had a dent and a spreading bruise across her forehead: from Spike’s bat, most likely. Figured Spike would have taken her down first and fast, to keep her out of the general fight. Her eyes were strange, and Mike figured she didn’t altogether know what she was doing--just automatically responding to the order, doing what those around her were doing, if they were able.  
  
Mike leaned hard again, forcing her down. Finally, covertly, he popped her one on the chin, which folded her satisfactorily. Hadn’t the sense of a pea.  
  
A little more than half the fledges were able to waver to their feet. Hadn’t done them any severe damage, after all.  
  
“You lot,” said Spike, surveying the standing fledges, “you go on back to what you were doing.” Looking to Digger, he added, “I’ll take the rest,” flipping a hand to indicate those that were still down.  
  
“Fine by me. Do that,” said Digger, turning back into the crypt.  
  
The standing fledges followed him, and the surrounding vamps faded away.  
  
Took about fifteen minutes to get the remainder of the fledges conscious, more or less, and fit to move. Wasn’t so much the damage: most all of them were starved and showed it in their bony, skull-like faces, sticklike limbs, and dull eyes. They went as they were pushed or hauled, just like they’d been pushed into the fight. To delay things, just cannon fodder, until the adult vamps could arrive.  
  
On his own, Len collected Sue, having noted that Mike had made sure she wasn’t in the group delivered back to Digger. A little too quick on the uptake for Mike’s tastes: have to keep an eye on him in particular.  
  
If Spike named a mark, Mike didn’t hear it, just following along, keeping the newbies on track and together as they recovered, detailing them to keep the disoriented fledges going however they had to.  
  
They all felt it together: prey approaching. The fledges burst forward. Uncontrollable, unless they were dusted. Spike stood in the street, calmly watching, as they took the prey down and frantically fed.  
  
Looking around, Mike recognized the location: Mulberry and Sycamore, near the all-night drugstore. One of the preferred meeting places for drug dealers and their customers. Three, that Mike spotted right off, casual and conspicuous on the corners, under the streetlights.  
  
Strolling nearer, Spike directed, “Squads on the fledges, two to one. Spread ‘em out. Take the buyers as they leave. Leave the dealers for bait, until last. If they’re in cars, let the cars move at least a block clear before they’re taken. Fledges feed first, then the handlers can have any left over. Clear?”  
  
“Clear, Spike. Everybody gets well. And high, besides. You do know how to throw a party,” commented Mike, grinning.  
  
“Yeah, well. See to it, then.” Spike moved off, rubbing the back of his neck like he was annoyed about something, Mike couldn’t imagine what, since everything had gone off pretty much without a hitch.  
  
No matter. Just one of Spike’s moods. Mike started pairing up the newbies with the dazed fledges, setting up the ambush points in convenient alleys and behind parked cars at a suitable distance from the bait.


	8. Powers and Persuasions

“But the Hellmouth is a badness. Major badness!” protested Willow earnestly, picking pills off her sweater sleeve. Important to do that or you could become all pill-y.  
  
“But think of it,” Amy insisted, sitting even farther forward on the yellow couch, as if she’d launch herself at Willow any minute. For somebody who’d been in frozen flames until half an hour ago, she hadn’t missed a beat in her transparent attempt to drag Willow into the badness too. Willow wasn’t buying it, not a bit. Willow was all about the topic.  
  
“We’re talking about Spike here,” Willow pointed out, as forcefully as she could with her hand full of fuzzy sweater pills.  
  
“Hell with Spike, he doesn’t matter,” Amy came back at once. “What’s one vamp, more or less? You have to screw the spell practically sidewise to get magic to take any notice of vamps at all. They’re nothing. Magic-null. Practically magic sinks, black holes of power suckage. I’m embarrassed every time I have to open the _Arcanum_ , it’s so baby it practically has training wheels, you know? And those terrible invocations! Geez!”  
  
Willow had to smile a little because the invocations in the _Arcanum were_ particularly dumb. Every noun dangling five or six adjectives, practically gasping for breath it was so smothered, like the sort of really hideous, embarrassing romance novels she didn’t read anymore, except on Valentine’s Day, and that was only to give herself a cheap chuckle.  
  
“Somebody who can create a solid stasis, stop Time in its tracks, what does she want with a training-wheels text like the _Arcanum?_ ” Amy rolled on like a river in flood, that would terrify all the small furry animals but probably not the birds, that could watch, perfectly safe, from their perches in high trees, except of course if they’d nested too low and they’d be worrying then, all right, all those little downy chicks peeping away for worms and icky stuff like that except there wouldn’t be any, with a flood. Willow wondered if worms could drown. Frogs would probably like it, though--big ol’ flood like that. Willow didn’t like frogs.  
  
And sure it was great to talk magical shop with somebody who really _understood,_ who could make jokes about the stupid, out-of-scale woodcut illustrations in Branham’s _Afrits, Imps, and Malign Spirits,_ like offering a picture of an actual horse to accompany the text on nightmare, at least it was supposed to be a horse but it looked more like a deformed goat and Tara had always giggled over that one when they hit it looking for the footnotes about incubi, succubae, that directed the reader to the really useful sources, but no, no, no, Willow was sticking to the topic here, with no digressions.  
  
“The sparkly powder--”  
  
Amy made a big get-out-of-here brush-away disdainful gesture, like waving off a bad smell. “Vamps won’t believe anything works if they can’t _see_ it working. So you got to build in all these stupid special effects, flash and whistle, or they won’t believe it’s any good. The more flash and noise you give ‘em, the more powerful they’ll think it is. Utter savages. It was a bitty little nothing spell. The deathwish, that was solid and should have got the job done all on its own. So the follow-up, that was nothing because no more should have been needed and wouldn’t have been, if you’d let things run their course. Never thought you’d stoop to defending a vamp against High Magick!”  
  
“Well, he’s my business partner--” Willow began defensively.  
  
“Oh no! The mutt’s got you, too! And here I believed you really were down and sincere with the gayness--”  
  
Really put out, Willow threw a Silence at her with a snapped word and a gesture, and Amy couldn’t break it. Couldn’t say the release-spell because, well, Silenced. Opening and closing her mouth like a guppy. That should teach her better than to question the sincerity of Willow’s gayness! Hadn’t even re-connected with Oz when she’d had the chance, despite Oz being so cute and sweet, but she’d said, “Oh, no, I’m gay through and through and nothing more to do with the likes of you, buster!” Or at least words to that effect. So what, if she’d gotten all upset when Spike had kissed her, right in front of Buffy and everything? Anybody would be upset and all indignant, promiscuous vamp kissage like that, it just wasn’t right and she’d told him so in no uncertain terms, too, once he’d put her down. Spike wasn’t the hulk and hover type: more compact and sinewy, a little like Oz that way, and it was easy to forget how freaking _strong_ he was, lifted her up and twirled her around like she was nothing, a feather, and it was just being so surprised that’d kept her from exerting Force and _making_ him put her down, right that very instant! And she _could_ have, she really truly _could_ have, but Buffy wouldn’t have liked that, nobody allowed to beat up on ol’ Spike but the Slayer, and you always had to keep that in mind.  
  
“Vamps are not mutts,” Willow declared haughtily, picking sweater pills, “just because other demons look down on them. And the Order of Aurelius is nothing to sneeze at, either: an ancient lineage. And you wouldn’t call him a mutt if you’d ever seen his aura: it’s ginormous. Three times normal size, at least. And he deals with the Powers direct, and is practically an ancient even though he isn’t even 200 yet: he can channel! Yes! It’s how he closed the Hellmouth. Of course the amulet helped, you always have to have a focus, I mean a catalyst, to get things properly started, but he took it from there, burned out practically three whole city blocks and several stories down, _huge_ crater, and now he’s Master of Sunnydale and everything. So he’s a perfectly respectable business partner to have and anybody that says different is just ignorant!”  
  
Willow waited for Amy to admit her mistake, but Amy didn’t say anything, just making those dumb fish faces. Oh. Willow spoke the Release.  
  
Amy made a few experimental noises, like _ummm_ and _ah_ , then said, “Well, no wonder the incendiary spell didn’t set him afire, then, if he can channel. I don’t know what anybody expects if they don’t tell me these things!”  
  
“So it was an incendiary--? You gave a vamp an incendiary spell to throw at another vamp, no gloves or anything, at close quarters? And _nobody_ went up? Flamed out? What kind of incompetent--”  
  
“Oh, no, no,” Amy cut in hastily, “that was just the sparkly flash effect and who knows, it _might_ have caught him, vamps are so freakin’ flammable, after all. But that was just the decoration, the, well, fireworks.” Amy smiled broadly at her play on words, which Willow considered pretty lame and didn’t smile at even a little. So Amy sobered, frowning anxiously, and ran on, “Not the main effect, just the decoration, the delivery packaging, like I said before. And shouldn’t even have been needed, like I said. The deathwish should have been enough, all by itself, and would have been, if you hadn’t interfered. It was never made to stand up against the powers of a witch of your stature. Just one of those silly Keystone vamp feuds, after all, everybody running around, bumping into things, big poof, dust everyplace…. And like that,” Amy concluded meekly, seeing that Willow was not prepared to be amused.  
  
“So what was it?”  
  
Amy knew she wasn’t gonna get away with any more dancing around the topic, going everyplace except to the center. Not around Willow, nosir. Amy hung her head and folded her hands. “Nothing much. I didn’t think it would even be used. A _Be as you were,_ is all.”  
  
“A regression spell?” When Amy bobbed her head affirmatively, Willow asked incredulously, “On a vamp? What were you trying to do: turn him human again?”  
  
“Oh, no, really, I know it would be no use against a major transmogrification, like being a vamp. Can’t undo that. But all vamps start out as fledges, you know? All grrr and uncontrolled and dumb. A fledge could never put together an empire or, well, a town. It’d have trouble stacking two bricks. Never have the patience, and nobody would listen to him anyway. After all, a fledge, for cripe’s sake! And Digger seemed to like it, he’d have no problem putting a fledge in its place, even though with a vamp as old as Spike, it would naturally take a while to unspool and have any effect anybody else could notice. Digger’s patient, for a vamp. Unusual that way. And he pays right up in advance, well, a little held back for completion and satisfaction, but since I’d already quadrupled the price over the cost of the materials, I don’t mind that, you know? Vamps have no idea of what things cost. They make ideal customers that way. Except they don’t much have any money, either. So pretty much a niche market. But with business so bad, and me with start-up costs and all, you have to take some pretty dismal commissions just to get the business off the ground. Like you and this cockamamie smell. Not even remotely worthy of your gifts.”  
  
Although Willow was rather proud of concocting the smell, somebody who didn’t realize how complicated and detailed it was, layering a smell, working out the release, persistence, and sublimation rates, could think it sounded pretty piddly. Learning the basics, and even many of the subtleties, of the perfumer’s art in a couple of weeks when it generally took lifetimes was no small achievement. Even if it didn’t sound like much, viewed from outside.  
  
Willow shrugged. “Like you said: it was a commission. Passes the time between classes. I’m in college now, you know.”  
  
“That’s what I heard. What’s your major?”  
  
“Double major: communications theory and chaos theory. I suppose sometime I’ll have to change schools, study with a major Chaotician, but--”  
  
“Communications theory and chaos theory? But isn’t that the same thing?” Amy waited eagerly for Willow to see her joke. “Like a redundancy?”  
  
“Tautology,” corrected Willow aloofly. Not funny. And Amy was trying too hard.  
  
“And here I am still working on my GED. I really missed out, all that time as a rat.”  
  
“Well, the mayor’s commencement speech would have been a happy miss,” Willow reflected. “And I could have done without the time I tried to destroy the world. But overall--”  
  
“You _did?_ ”  
  
“I don’t want to talk about it.”  
  
"Of course. I understand. Tell me about that girl you had with you before, then. The tall one with no shape and the mop on her head. How could you pull all that power out of her? I mean, I assume she's a virgin, but geez!"  
  
Amy’s nose was twitching. Habit, probably.  
  
**********  
  
Sunday mornings were generally a good time to get hold of people, have meetings. If they were churchgoers, they likely weren’t the sort of people Spike would be dealing with anyway. Those accustomed to late rising would have to learn to adapt to his schedule.  
  
Sunday’s agenda was packed to bursting, if Spike was to get to sleep at a decent hour in the afternoon. The first appointment was shortly after the sunrise delivery of the tribute blood ration. Spike made a point of being extra polite to his visitor, thanking him for coming out so early and offering him morning food, coffee and pastries, that humans seemed to find suitable, before going to the gap and yelling for Huey. Needed some sort of paging system, intercom, something like that, he thought, walking back.  
  
When Huey came in, Spike introduced them. “Huey, this is Rudolph Murchison. He’s a lawyer, represented that nest of Harnish by the bowling alley on that trespassing and unlawful deprivation of enjoyment and what-all case a couple of years back. Unlike most people in Sunnydale, he pretty much knows what’s what, has no problem dealing with demons.”  
  
Huey nodded. When the human set down his cup, stood, and offered his hand, Huey shook it, faintly surprised but agreeable. Then they both sat down.  
  
Spike went on, “He’s agreed to act as my agent for daytime things. Mr. Murchison, Huey’s my castellan. Would translate as something like major domo. Takes care of internal arrangements, procurement, personnel maintenance, that sort of thing. Anything Huey says will already have been cleared with me, so you won’t need a separate go-ahead. You’ll be dealing mostly with him. Want you two to get acquainted, rough out what we’re gonna need done in the next few months, what contacts need to be set up, and like that. A reliable car is first, to start the airport pick-up. Huey, Mr. Murchison will arrange for that today, till we get a regular courier who can move around in the daytime. Not gonna lumber Rona with that. All right?” When both nodded and made noises of agreement, Spike left them to it.  
  
In the southwest corner of the factory, there was a hatch in the floor. Pulled open, it revealed a descending stairwell where Spike understood the cheerleader, that Cordelia, had contrived to fall and get herself impaled on a piece of rebar one time. All cleared out and fixed since then, of course. The steel staircase led to a large, windowless open space: once the factory receiving/shipping area, now designated as the dormitory. The space was completely dark: Spike had to change aspect to see.  
  
On a cluster of mattresses laid on the floor, about two dozen vamps slept, mostly in tangles of two or three, completely motionless. Predictably, the new fledges had bedded down together toward the rear, feeling more secure that way, with the mature vamps between them and any intrusion.  
  
It took awhile--the advent of daylight took fledges down like a hammer-blow--but Spike managed to get Sue something like awake and led her to the empty freight elevator shaft, where three picnic tables, the sort with built-in benches, had been put. Yawning, she braced her elbows on the table and sagged against Spike’s arm, saying blurrily, “My hero. You came for me.”  
  
Shaking her arm made her chin fall off her fists. “Wake up, Sue. Listen here.”  
  
“Yeah. Listening.”  
  
“Can’t take credit for you getting picked up in the sweep. You hear me?”  
  
“Yeah…. All right. Glad all the same. That place, it’s a hell-hole.”  
  
She’d never seen a hell-hole. But no use to tell her that. And no good telling her she’d only been picked up because Mike had made a point of collecting her, whereas Spike had left it to her whether she’d stay down or stupidly stand and be returned to Digger. She’d want to think it was rescue and meant something, some special favor and concern, and it was no good giving a fledge notions of her own importance. Only meant trouble, and fledges were enough trouble as it was.  
  
She was filthy. She stank. Her hair hung in dull, matted tangles. Exposed skin was livid with bruises. Have to do something about getting shower facilities set up. Had water, though only cold; had drains. Spike made a mental note to have Huey see to it. Friday night, he’d showered at vacant Casa Mike, but that was hardly convenient. And the condition of his people reflected on him.  
  
“Since you’re here,” Spike went on, “there’s something I want you to do. Wake up when I’m talking to you.”  
  
Jostled, she yanked her head up, staring wildly. “Listening. Really.”  
  
“All right. Want you to chat up the new fledges, see what you can find out about who turned ‘em. Any description, any detail. Smell, approach, where they were taken, anything. Gonna get that fucker. You hear me?”  
  
“Yeah. Got it. Hungry,” she whined.  
  
All the fledges were in desperate need of feeding up. Enough that they’d always feel hungry, even after a full feeding. Be awhile before that would let up.  
  
“That’s being seen to. But you’ll all have to earn your way. Lose half the day to sleep, then eat the other half, if you could. Bunch of babies.”  
  
“Yeah. Babies,” she said with a drowsy, dopy smile. She leaned, her cheek tipping onto his shoulder. Like she trusted him or something. Didn’t mean anything, except she couldn’t stay awake two minutes at a time.  
  
Spike sat a minute or two, deciding what to do. No harm to just leave her to have her sleep out where she was. Vamps could and did sleep anyplace they’d fit, so long as it was away from the light. He’d slept on a bare sarcophagus for years. But she hadn’t. Didn’t yet know the half of her strengths or vulnerabilities. Didn’t begin to understand what she truly needed, beyond the impulses of the moment.  
  
So he sighed and gathered her up and replaced her among her moveless fellows. With a fledge, some allowances had to be made.  
  
Then he went back up to check in with Buffy by phone, at the start of her day, then catch up with e-mail, deal with responses to certain recruitment initiatives, until it was time to leave for his next appointment, out at the mall. He'd already missed and rescheduled it three or four times. Putting it off, he admitted. So past time to finally get it seen to.  
  
**********  
  
Willow spent the rest of the morning researching spells, then phoned a very annoyed Anya to open the Magic Box so Willow could pick up the needed materials.  
  
Groping in boxes and canisters, Willow remarked snappishly, “I don’t know why your nose is all out of joint, since you were here anyway.”  
  
She’d found Anya in overalls, her hair wrapped up in a scarf, diligently sweeping the floor of the annex around display cases relocated there with the clear intention of exploiting for retail purposes the space freed by its being vacated as Buffy’s training room. Shelves, in different stages of construction, were being built to line the walls. With the appropriation of the annex, the shop had nearly doubled in size. Chivying the dust and scraps from various angles and herding the pile toward some designated point known only to herself, frowning intently, Anya replied, “It’s a distraction, and I don’t need distractions. I have all of one day to prepare this area and set out the stock attractively.”  
  
Separating a tangle of dried asters on a countertop, Willow said over her shoulder, “I’ll come back and help, after I’m done at the factory. And maybe Buffy could put in an hour or two. She has no plans today, at least that she’s told me.” Getting no reply, she looked around. “You _did_ ask Buffy if it was all right to coopt this space, didn’t you?” Her question grew softer and more uncertain as it progressed, and she suddenly knew Anya had done no such thing. “Or even Giles?” she added hopefully.  
  
“Giles sold his interest to me before he left. Since he’s resident abroad now, it’s much simpler that way: with any degree of foreign ownership, the paperwork is appalling.” Grabbing a pump bottle, Anya crouched down to spray the front glass of a display case with the same intent vigor as she’d attacked the floor. “I’m the sole proprietress. Why should I ask anybody how to set up my displays?”  
  
Not wanting to get in a brangle with Anya, especially when they both knew she’d been high-handed and wasn’t going to admit it, Willow said brightly, “Here’s a list of what I’ve taken. Do you want to ring it up now, or wait till I--”  
  
Anya swooped past, collecting the list on the way to the register. So Willow muttered, “Guess deferred payment is not an option here.”  
  
Making grudged change of a twenty, Anya asked tartly, “And how is the Power settling in?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Willow admitted. “I mostly don’t see her much.”  
  
“You mean you avoid her,” Anya corrected. “Wise choice.”  
  
“It makes me a little nervous trying to research how to get her to leave,” Willow admitted, putting the change and the materials away in her tote.  
  
“Don’t,” advised Anya, passing by to resume her cleaning. “She’ll leave when she’s good and ready and not before. Try to interfere with her, you’re liable to end up in the cornfield. Like in that story?”  
  
Willow shivered and took her leave.  
  
It was what vamps might consider a nice day, Willow thought, looking up through the windshield: solid overcast sliding in from the west, threatening rain. No sun to be seen anywhere. The factory, on its desolate rise, looked particularly unwelcoming against the gunmetal sky. Mostly, Willow admitted, the place gave her the creeps, though short of a full wiggins, since she knew any vamp attacking her would be severely disciplined. Afterward. Which wasn’t all that reassuring, now that she thought about it….  
  
Bustling up to the sentry room, she was disappointed that the vamp wasn’t anybody she knew. “I’m here to see Spike. I’m his business--”  
  
“He ain’t here.”  
  
“Oh.” Willow looked at her watch, confirming that it was past noon. “When is he coming back?”  
  
“Didn’t say.”  
  
Willow started to ask if she could wait here, then thought better of it. The vamp didn’t seem much for small talk, and she hadn’t brought a book. Backing out, she said nervously, gesturing, “I’ll just wait in my car. Over there. Would you let me know when he gets back?”  
  
The vamp just looked at her.  
  
Returning to her car and locking all the doors made her feel marginally more secure, even though with the overcast, any vamp could walk right up and rip off a door. She reviewed spells, trying to choose which would be best to try in that scenario. Or the other six she promptly came up with.  
  
When half an hour had passed, she dug out her cell phone and punched in Spike’s number. Half the time he had it turned off and the other half it was dead because he’d forgotten to recharge it, but he was getting better about that, she thought contritely. On only the eighteenth ring, the connection was made, and she had Spike’s voice in her ear, demanding, “What?”  
  
“Spike, it’s me, Willow. I’m up at the factory. Where are you?”  
  
“What’s up?”  
  
“I found out what the sparkly dust was. A regression spell. I’ve brought what I’ll need to dispel it.”  
  
Silence.  
  
Willow offered, “Would it be better if I met you someplace?”  
  
More silence. Then, “No. I’ll be back in about twenty minutes. If you can’t wait--”  
  
“Oh, no, I’ll wait,” Willow assured him. She was quite willing to help out Anya but certainly wasn’t in any hurry about it.  
  
“Oh. All right, then.” With his usual abruptness, he ended the call.  
  
After half an hour fiddling with her radio, trying to find anything but sermons or bluegrass, Willow hoped she’d waited long enough and made another try at the sentry post. The vamp opened the inner door for her without comment, so she concluded he’d had fresh instructions. She hustled through the factory, which seemed utterly empty and deserted until something made her look up and she saw a vamp perched on a cross-girder, looking down at her like a gargoyle. That spooked her. Clutching her tote against her breasts, she hustled a little faster--back to the barricade and through. The office was as dark as the surrounding space. As she approached cautiously, the desk light was turned on, and Spike straightened, looking toward her. That was _much_ better.  
  
Plunking her tote down on a chair, she started getting the materials out, commenting, “It’s an insidious thing. Slow and insidious. Pushing you back to earlier and earlier mind-sets, and--”  
  
“Appreciate your concern,” Spike broke in, leaning against the back wall, rubbing his eyes tiredly. “But if it’s all the same to you, I’d just as soon not.”  
  
“Excuse me?”  
  
“To be blunt, let it alone, Red. Keep your stuff. Maybe later. Some other day.”  
  
“You don’t want me to lift it? But why?”  
  
Spike took his time lighting a cigarette. “I know what a regression does. How it acts. Nothing like fatal. A nuisance, at best. But…I been finding it handy, like. Things clearer for me.” He smiled at her ruefully. “Maybe I used to be smarter than I am now. Dunno. Just not in any rush to get it lifted. No harm in waiting, is there?”  
  
“Well, probably not for a day or two, I guess. I wouldn’t put it off longer, though. Spike, it’s influencing you: how you think, how you react to things. It wasn’t made for your benefit, you know.”  
  
“That Amy, she make it?”  
  
“Yeah. She admitted it.”  
  
“So she’s out of the stasis?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“On fire, you said. Burned real bad, was she?”  
  
“Well, no. Not even singed.” That _was_ odd, now that Willow stopped to think about it. An effect of the stasis?  
  
“Ahuh. What’s her last name?”  
  
Willow stared at him, puzzled. “Madison. Amy Madison.”  
  
“An’ am I recalling right, she was one of your old chums? High school? Pre rat?”  
  
“Well, not so much chums, but we knew each other, yes. Traded spells, talked about what we’d managed to accomplish. Just starting out then. Part of the time I knew her, she was her mother. It’s complicated.”  
  
“Ahuh. And she’s been de-ratted, what--about a year?”  
  
“A little more, but about,” Willow agreed.  
  
“Come on fast, then, hasn’t she. Considering all that time she missed. Went right for the strong stuff, didn’t mess about with levitating pencils and such. Adapting spells an’ all, casting a deathwish…that worked.”  
  
Willow didn’t see what he was getting at. Awkwardly, twisting the tote handles, she admitted, “She introduced me to Rack.”  
  
“Oh: Rack! Big time power-sucker. I’m all sorts of impressed,” Spike commented sardonically.  
  
“Yeah, well, he’s dead.”  
  
“Ahuh,” Spike said, as if he knew she’d killed him. “But before that, Rack introduced her around, I think. Made herself some connections, back when the power was free for the taking. When the Hellmouth was still blaring at 2,000 decibels on the dark mojo scale.”  
  
“What are you getting at?”  
  
“Just curious, is all. I got a witch, Digger’s got a witch. Trying to size up the opposition. She got more power than you, Red?”  
  
“No way!”  
  
“You sure of that?”  
  
“Absolutely positive!”  
  
“She got more usable magic than you? ‘Cause a lot of things, you won’t do. You hang back from the strong stuff. Probably sensible. But if she uses all she has, and we’re always playing catch-up, reacting to something she’s already done, and you’re being dainty about what you’ll touch or catch hold of….”  
  
Willow felt wounded. “Don’t you have confidence in me, Spike?”  
  
“Don’t like magic,” he said abruptly, frowning toward the cot. “Don’t like messing with it. Don’t even like thinking about it, though that’s mostly what I do, nowadays…. With the translation, an’ all. Like to get the magic out of the equation altogether. Keep things to what I have good hold of, myself. What I know.” He looked up, straight at her. “I know my limits. Don’t know yours. Don’t want to catch you in an awkward spot, where you’d have to go past what you’re willing to do, what you think is right, to get the job done. You have scruples, and I respect that. Don’t believe this Amy puts quite the same restrictions on herself. Catch up with her eventually…but maybe not soon enough to do me any good.  
  
“Have to think it out a bit more, Red, before I decide how to play this part of it. The magic part. No criticism of you. None whatever. But I knew this was gonna get ugly sooner or later. Why I thought it’d be a real bad idea to have the soul along. Built-in limits, y’see. I’m more of Amy’s cast of mind, now, than I am yours. So I need to think it out some more. Sorry I made you wait. Had something to see to. And to me, now, it’s like three in the morning would be to you. Not a real great time for deciding things.” Stubbing out the cigarette in an ashtray on the desk, he came and tucked back into her tote the few things she’d gotten out of it, then took her arm and started steering her toward the exit. “I’ll think about it and let you know. I’ve put it on the agenda.”  
  
Just past the barricade, Willow spun and threatened, “I’ll tell Buffy!”  
  
“You do that, if that’s what you think is right.”  
  
“No,” Willow admitted, deflating. “But Spike--”  
  
“It will all be fine. Just clears the air, clears the decks a little further. Dont you worry about it.” Turning, he started back toward the office, adding over his shoulder, “’F Rubio--that’s who’s on the door, Rubio: means ‘red’ in Spanish--if he gives you the least lip, you have my permission to turn him into a porcupine. Gerbil. Whatever you please.” A wave of his hand dismissed the matter.  
  
Since he’d refused, there was nothing Willow could do. But she wasn’t happy about it. Decidedly not happy.  
  
**********  
  
By Spike’s watch, it was 2:03 in the morning. Looking at the dark window from the sidewalk, he pushed the #2 speed dial. After two rings, he got a cautious, “Who’s there?”  
  
He said, “Come down to the porch. Bring a coat, it’s nippy,” and ended the call.  
  
A light came on.  
  
She’d come, he thought, because she was curious. Like tying a bit of rag to your rifle’s reamer, poking the reamer upright in the ground, and retreating back behind a rise to wait for the pronghorn to come investigate the flutter. Or so Digger, who should know, had told him, upon a time. When Spike had first come to Sunnydale, there’d been no pronghorn in the folds of its land, only a Slayer who used much more direct methods.  
  
He put down his bag of doings and settled on the glider. Before a cigarette’s worth of time, she came tip-toeing out, bundled up good and warm in her borrowed body. Spike didn’t say anything, just pitched the remainder of the cigarette and took from his bag the knife and the length of branch that were the beginning of it.  
  
Opening the knife, he started. Green wood, but winter wood: it had left off growing for the season. The bark was stripped off easily by the sharp blade. Then he set about working on the bulges, to smooth them out, gradually sharpen the angle from butt to tip. Never make a perfect round but didn’t need to. In the past year, he’d cut thousands of stakes. His hands knew their work without need of eyes.  
  
He told her about the winter wood, how it wasn’t seasoned and would warp with time, but that was no problem if not given time to do so. She settled warily on the far end of the glider, watching his hands.  
  
“The tricky part,” he continued, “is finding the right tree. The right age. Sunnydale has a gardening club, plants a few trees each Arbor Day. That’s a holiday they have here, out of guilt for so many forests leveled, trees cut, so the erosion sets in. And not a proper holiday, just one of those made-up ones, like Secretary’s Day. Anyway, they’re a proud bunch: got their own website and put their back records on there. What tree planted where in what year. Each a year-old sapling. So wasn’t hard at all to find the right one. Had the choice of a Bradford pear, a pin oak, and a maple. Oak is always good, strong wood, so I picked that and took this bit, clean against the trunk, not leave an unsightly nub. A tree of her years.”  
  
“They don’t talk to me,” said Lady Gates in a sudden burst. “They’re afraid of me. Even without looking into their minds, I know. They’re also angry.”  
  
Steadily working, Spike responded, “Well, that’s not to be wondered at. You’re powerful and unknown. That pretty well kills casual conversation. And you’re keeping shut away someone they know and love and feel protective toward. Imprisoned, like. I’m a bit angry with you on that account myself.”  
  
“You don’t fear me. Why not?”  
  
Spike hitched a shoulder. “What difference would it make? You’ll do what you please, regardless. An’ you’ve known what I was from the beginning, yet considered I’d make a useful instrument. Smooth to the hand. Like this instrument here. ‘F you meant to end me, you’d have done it long since.”  
  
Having finished the preliminary rounding, he passed the stake across for her inspection.  
  
“It feels slippery,” she mentioned, touching it with a cautious fingertip.  
  
“That’s because it’s green wood, love.” The endearment slipped out reflexively. “Only a couple of hours from living. Hold it. Test it out. Tell me what you think.”  
  
She closed her hand around the thick end and made a couple awkward stabbing motions. Then she went away within herself a moment and changed her grip: underhanded, stabbing up. More confident. Drawing on what her other, smaller self knew.  
  
Though he couldn’t smell or feel her, Bit was here. An onlooker.  
  
Passing the stake back, she touched one place with a fingertip. “It’s weak there. A lump, deep inside. Too deep to be cut out.”  
  
“I’ll allow for that. Thanks.” He got a marker out of the bag and began the sigils, the stake braced against his knee.  
  
Lady Gates watched him inscribe it around and down its length. She asked quietly, “Do you imagine this to be a weapon against me?”  
  
Spike laughed. “Didn’t even occur to me you’d think that. No, ‘course not. Bit of a problem here, you see: I can’t get in ‘less I’m invited. And she, having half a brain, won’t invite me. So she has to be brought out to where I can get at her.”  
  
“Wood from a tree of her years. Yes. I see now. But you’re no mage: how will you power it?”  
  
Spike finished the markings and lifted the stake by the tip so the writing could dry completely. “All I’ve ever had is myself. Red, she tells me now that I contain magic--silly little regression spell I been hexed with. This will give some teeth to it. One tooth, anyways. Bite deep, this will. Trick is getting it from me out into this.”  
  
Laying the stake aside on the glider seat, he pulled from the bag a small brass bowl into which he poured the ingredients he’d swiped from the Magic Box. Not hard: he had a key to the back door. Demon Girl had asked for it back, but Spike wasn’t yet ready to give up that access. If she noticed her stock was down, he’d pay her full value.  
  
“Has to burn hot,” he explained, “to make up for the green wood, that will want to smoke and smolder, not burn.” Setting the bowl on the metal glider seat, he dug out his lighter and lit its contents. It sprang up into white, intense flame. When he was sure it was well caught, he quickly dropped the bark and shavings from the stake on top. The flame hesitated a second, then accepted the fresh fuel.  
  
As he applied the knife to the thick of his right palm, below the thumb, she reached out reflexively, crying, “No. Don’t!”  
  
“Power’s in the blood, love. Has to come from someplace. Won’t come out of the air, except for those made a study of it.” When the flame accepted the blood, too, Spike stuck his bleeding hand into it.  
  
It was painful, of course. Waves of pain running up his arm, old impulses making him want to flinch away. But that didn’t signify. He’d closed that hand around molten metal and burned it to the bone. A little pain was no deterrent. His hand obeyed him, not the pain. Felt a little strange, but he’d expected that.  
  
When the blood broke through the surface of the skin, he figured that should be enough. Pulling his hand back without haste, he forced it shut around the stake, methodically coating it. Just enough. Not wet or thick enough to smear the sigils.  
  
“People got this idea,” he said, “that vamps burn real easy. But it’s just the sun, something in the light, that hates us and does us harm. Regular fire, it doesn’t burn us any more than other folk. No less, but no more.”  
  
Holding the stake, he put his hand back into the flame. There was a threshold, he’d found. Had to be at the point of actually kindling to set off the reflex. Couldn’t do it otherwise. As he felt the flex, he took the pain, and whatever might be of magic within him, and _pushed_.  
  
Fire was gone, just like that. Every spark. Setting the stake aside a bit awkwardly, he drew ointment and a roll of gauze out of the bag with his good hand. Holding them out to her, he commented, “See, that’s what I needed you for. Miserable trying to wrap one hand with the other. And knots are a bitch.”  
  
Slowly and with great care she spread the ointment over his hand, front and back, and then wound it around with the gauze, attending closely that the wrap was even and laid smooth. “I’ve seen mummies wrapped.”  
  
“Have you now.”  
  
“And in other places, other rites. It’s charged,” she reported, with a small nod at the stake.  
  
“Good to know that.” With his good hand, he got out a cigarette. After a tap to settle the tobacco, that cigarettes didn’t need anymore, what with the filters and all, he put the end in his mouth and passed her his lighter. She got it open, consulted within, and got it lit. “Ta,” Spike said, pulling in smoke and accepting the lighter back from her.  
  
“May I have the knife, please.”  
  
He passed that to her and she divided the gauze, to have two ends to wrap in opposite directions and then tie in a neat knot, cutting off the excess afterward.  
  
She asked, “How long will it take to heal?”  
  
“Be fine by morning. Surface, is all. But the salve takes away some of the sting in the meantime. And the wrap holds it there.”  
  
Having slid closer to bandage his hand, she pulled away again and tucked her bent legs up close beside her, sitting as small as she could, as far away as she could get and still be in the glider. “I take your point,” she said abruptly. “You’re not afraid of pain if it serves your purpose. Is that how you think of me? As pain to be endured?”  
  
“Haven’t given me much reason to think of you otherwise. And you’re no good swap for Bit.”  
  
She stood, lanky long-legged and sudden, brushing her hair from her face in a very Dawnlike gesture. “You can’t force me.”  
  
“Know that. Hope you’ll decide you don’t want to keep her much longer. When you done what you came for. Enough, anyway, to begin it. ‘Cause this is not your place. Not what you’re _for._ And we miss each other, Bit and me. She would have had fun tonight, and wanted to come along to see the end of it. But that’s not what you want at all.”  
  
“No,” Lady Gates said softly, hugging her coat tight against her. “No.”  
  
“Get yourself back to bed then.” He put everything back into the bag. “Shank of the evening, to me: got places to go, people to do. Good night.” Stepping down the stairs, he added, “Good night, Bit.”  
  
“G’night, Spike,” Dawn’s voice responded behind him.  
  
**********  
  
Spike’s right hand was sore and seeping through the gauze when he set the kickstand and left the bike near Amy Madison’s house. Necessary.  
  
With her name, it’d been easy to find her: she was in the phone book, and a simple search had yielded her birth date and her mother’s high school achievements and honors. Amy hadn’t had any of those, though, having been a rat.  
  
The thickened sky was finally delivering its threatened rain in gusts and drifts. No sensible person would want to leave a warm, dry house to stand in it. Spike’s fingers, forced to close around the stake, provided the necessary coercion. Broken blisters and blood freshened the magical affinity between the spelled wood and the witch. She came, dream-eyed, in a long flannel nightgown the rain soaked and weighted against the contours of her body.  
  
He’d slid into his vampire aspect so she’d know him. Holding the stake that in turn held her, he circled her once around, widdershins, then twice more. The stake was eager to get at her, like half of a pair of magnets pulling to unite, but Spike held it fast. It was important that she understand.  
  
“You bespelled me twice now. Not gonna let you do it a third time. I can embed in wood the harm you tried to do me. And deliver it back.”  
  
He plunged the stake deep in her shoulder. She cried out: a wordless, inarticulate noise. Because the regression spell he’d bound to the wood with his blood and pain was no longer gradual. A year’s growth in comprehension was instantly erased; and a rat knew no defensive spell to undo the sorcery or the damage.  
  
Terrified and in pain, glancing about her wildly, the witch dropped to fingers and toes and skittered away into the rainy night.


	9. Symbolic

Sunday, Buffy attempted a cake. Frowning at the recipe, she decided margarine should do as well as butter, and besides, she didn't have any butter; and all that sugar certainly would be bad for anyone, so she used half; and the recipe didn't specify exactly how long or vigorously the cook was supposed to stir the batter, so she stirred like fury until it was practically hardened in the bowl, and it plopped into the pan like cement. She had to push it into the corners.  
  
All that could be said of the result was that it was the right shape: square. It was black, and hard as a brick. So maybe she _had_ left it a little longer than required, being distracted by Xander showing up to measure windows; and maybe the oven ran a few degrees hotter than it was actually set for (she thought she recalled Willow saying so, but wasn't sure). Whatever.  
  
She got up first thing Monday morning and bought a cupcake. No way she could have fit 123 candles on the square thing anyway.  
  
It was symbolic, she decided. And it was the thought that mattered, wasn’t it?  
  
Rushing through the two scheduled conferences based on her evaluations (done over the empty, miserable weekend, with only a few uncaught typos) got her clear about eleven thirty, which should be in time because her impression was that Spike generally retired about noon. Grabbing her tote and her jacket, she broke several speed limits driving out to the factory.  
  
The vamp sentry said his name was Huey. Buffy vaguely recalled seeing him before, though she didn’t know where. She didn’t really care, except she was making a dutiful effort to learn their names. It would have been easier if there hadn’t been a different one every time she came. She asked, tentatively, after Deuce and was told, politely but mystifyingly, that Deuce was gone. So she just said, “Oh,” and let it drop, with the disquieting suspicion that meant she’d dusted Deuce on patrol without recognizing him, only Huey was too polite to say so, right out.  
  
Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea, trying to learn all their names.  
  
Anyway Huey passed her right through, let her go back to the office without an escort. The factory seemed deserted. She wondered where the vamps were in the daytime, when they apparently weren’t here.  
  
Spike, though, was right where she expected him to be: in the office, at the desk, at the computer. Not how she expected him to look, though. Never would have expected that.  
  
Halting in the doorway, she stared, then blurted as he looked up, “You’re wearing glasses!”  
  
Annoyed and defiant, he reared back his head a little and said nothing. She couldn’t see his eyes at all.  
  
They were big, tinted, aviator-style glasses. Thin silver metal frames. Rather showy, actually, not that that should be a surprise. But she _was_ surprised because she found she’d expected something old-fashioned, not something so aggressively new. Not that she’d ever imagined him wearing glasses at all. But the glasses she’d imagined him _not_ wearing were little clear granny glasses, like you saw in old photographs. Not in fashion accent ads in GQ.  
  
She blurted, “You look like a movie star. Slumming as a clerk.”  
  
“You got a problem with that, Slayer?”  
  
“No, no, no. No problem. Just real surprised, is all. Never thought you’d break down and actually _do_ it.”  
  
Yeah, well. Doin’ this, now,” (he waved at the computer) “made me reconsider. No good bein’ half blind and headachy all the time. And that laser surgery, s’not an option. Would only heal back to what they were. So.” He shrugged, then folded his arms: still all defensive, except that she couldn’t see his eyes, to be sure.  
  
 _Way to go, Buffy,_ she thought: _piss him off, first thing._  
  
She grabbed in her tote for the cupcake--protected from squashing by a clear plastic shell--popped it on the corner of the desk, and opened the shell. Inserted a single candle from the pack. Held out her hand, requesting, “Lighter.” When Spike passed it over, she lit the candle, returned the lighter, and took a deep, fortifying breath.  
  
“Happy Birthday to you,  
“Happy Birthday to you.  
“Happy Birthday, dear Spi-ike,  
“Happy Birthday to you!”  
  
Finding only the impassive glasses gazing at her, she explained, “November 5th. Your new official birthday, courtesy of Giles.” She gestured at the burning candle, now running wax onto the icing. “It’s symbolic. I made a cake, but it came out wrong. Bad recipe. You’re supposed to make a wish and blow it out. And I hate not being able to see your eyes!”  
  
He consented to remove the glasses. His eyes were bright blue in this light: wicked-happy and speculative. He leaned forward and blew out the candle with a single short poof of breath. “Are there prezzies?”  
  
“Yeah, just a second.” She grabbed in her tote and brought out a gift-wrapped, angled oblong, about the shape of a pancake-turner, and plopped it onto the corner of the desk next to the cupcake. Smiling, Spike delicately unwrapped it, having cut through the curly blue paper ties with the viciously sharp knife he used to whittle stakes.  
  
“Well, now,” he said, holding up a right-side mirror for a Honda Shadow. “Isn’t that just fine.”  
  
“I knew it was something you needed, something I hoped you’d like, and I know it’s not your real birthday but you wouldn’t tell me that, and it’s all symbolic anyway. I love you,” Buffy said, all in a burst.  
  
“Love you too, and do I have to eat the cupcake?”  
  
Buffy shook her head hard.  
  
“Then give us a kiss, love,” he said, pushing out of the chair, and proceeded to prove why Buffy had long ago acknowledged him the champion kisser in the known universe.  
  
Eventually he let her breathe, still holding her, foreheads touching.  
  
“Not yet,” he said softly, “and not here. But soon. Someplace.” Before Buffy had thought of any response to that except more kissing, he released her to turn away and open a lower desk drawer. Holding out a small white box, he remarked, “Kept meaning to give you this. Either didn’t have it with me, or it wasn’t a good time. Maybe it’s the good time now.”  
  
Buffy removed from the box a thin silver ankle chain decorated with a silver skull with ruby eyes. She laughed. “Like my engagement ring!”  
  
“Put me in mind of it, yeah. Except that was only a spell. And this is real. And you don’t wear rings, and I know why. Silver’s break-away: won’t hobble you up, fighting. Not for your birthday or any occasion. Just because.”  
  
“Because is the best reason of all. Put it on for me?”  
  
Feeling a little shy, Buffy dropped into one of the plastic chairs and extended her left foot. As Spike fastened the chain around her ankle, she said, “Right foot means you’re available. Left foot means you’re taken.”  
  
“Yeah.” He bent and kissed her ankle-bone. “All symbolic…. Missed you real bad, these past couple days.”  
  
Buffy held in the comment that the separation was his doing, his choice. He knew it. No point saying so except meanness, and she tried not to do that.  
  
Instead, she said, “Hard times,” on a sigh, and kissed his bent head.  
  
“Hard times, true enough. So you don’t think the glasses make me look like an utter git?” he asked diffidently, looking up with a wary expression.  
  
“They make you look dashing, dangerous, and mysterious,” Buffy said firmly.  
  
“Kind of the effect I was going for, yeah. Won’t wear ‘em in public, only need ‘em for reading, but….”  
  
“Did you wear glasses, you know, before?” Buffy asked carefully.  
  
Asking a vamp anything about the _before_ was always tricky, she knew, and felt as an intrusion.  
  
Kneeling at her feet, Spike nodded solemnly. “ _Was_ an utter git, if you must know. Lied about that, what I told you once. Thought I’d got shut of it, tossed it all away forever. But it all comes back. For all the pretending, I’m still what I was. This, that I’m doing now, brings it all back to me: wet, silly chap that knew attic Greek, basement Greek, fancied himself…a kind of scholar, I suppose. Ruddy git. Don’t mind you knowing, but….”  
  
“Your secret is safe with me.”  
  
“Bit, she knows, claims not to think the less of me for it. Which reminds me: her birthday’s this week. Turns seventeen, this Thursday. What’d you figure to do about that?”  
  
“Nothing! Oh, I have her presents and everything, but I’m not gonna give Lady Gates--”  
  
“Think again, sweet. Bit’s there, too. She knows. Would want her due, regardless.”  
  
“How can I pretend it’s normal when that bitch--”  
  
“It’s special: maybe she’d feel bad, not to let Bit be there for it. And Bit will know, regardless. Would know if she’d been stinted. Do it extra, not less. Only once, that a girl turns seventeen. Symbolic. Make a proper do of it.”  
  
“All right,” Buffy agreed slowly, thinking of the singular disaster that her seventeenth birthday had been--soul-losing Angelsex--something that she did _not_ want to discuss with Spike. Or anybody. Ever. Glancing at her watch, she felt a small internal jerk. “I have to go. But I’ll be back after, like I promised. And you need to grab some sleep.”  
  
“Want to hold you,” Spike said, rocking back, away, sitting on his heels. “Grudge the time apart. Every minute.”  
  
Again, Buffy kept herself from pointless meanness. “Motivation,” she said. “To get past this time.”  
  
“You being so good, so steady, about it all--that’s been a help. Dunno if I could have managed, otherwise.”  
  
“We deal the best we can,” Buffy said. “Just like always. Got to run now.”  
  
“Yeah. See you later, then.”  
  
“Absolutely,” said Buffy, rising, feeling the slight weight of the ankle chain acutely. At the doorway, she added, “And next time? Ditch the glasses. Not that they look bad, they don’t. But…I need to see your eyes.”  
  
“All right,” he responded with a chuckle, straightening. “But don’t you make fun. It’s a bit of a sore subject.”  
  
“You know what? I’d figured that out all by myself. I do that sometimes.”  
  
“Yes, you do. Sometimes.”  
  
**********  
  
 _Hostile 17 has survived the procedure. The degree of ancillary damage, we won’t know until it regains motor functions._  
  
Yeah, that was one of the regular repertoire, that was. Indifferent anonymous clinical voice reporting. ‘Cause of course they’d only paralyzed him, not knocked him full out, so they could tweak and test reactions all the while they were doing it. Feel muscles firing off, no control over himself whatever. That was enough for him to rouse with the shakes and the suffocated desperate panting when it made its visits.  
  
Giles’ soft, shaken voice announcing to nobody, _I believe she’s gone._  
  
That was fit for a good few hours of sleeping misery and grief but couldn’t compare to what came afterward, his own unspoken awareness of helpless loss that encompassed that and cast it forward into an unendurable future of _never._ Hadn’t had that one lately, which was a blessing. Had him staggering and staring and making aimless convulsive gestures for days afterward when it hit.  
  
But this one, now: this was new.  
  
An unfamiliar voice remarking warmly, _What a delightfully savage pet you are!_ And the sense of his demon stroked, rousing, warily uncurling to bask in the approval no one had ever given it except Dru. The sense of warm, seen, valued, lifted into light that was frightening but didn’t hurt at all, the bright wicked appreciative gaze of something as large as a skyscraper that could pick him up in two fingers and then a spread hand to inspect and pet him, all approving of what it had found. Reflexively, despite yearning toward the bright/warm, the demon snarled out its defiance that it served no one, nothing, and was its own. And the voice in his mind replying, as if shocked, _Of course not, dear boy! An unthinkable waste, a crime against such fine experience and potential. No, I think I’ll have you as my pet, small creature of Chaos. And I’ll teach you such tricks and we’ll have such a time of it, you and I!_  
  
And his demon submitting ecstatically to the immense petting hand, never having developed any defenses against being loved.  
  
Cold and naked and perfectly still under the thin blanket, Spike stared at the vague dark ceiling and felt the aftershocks of the dream running through him, replaying the words and sensations and his demon’s adoring responses.  
  
Only a dream. Probably.  
  
When he could move, he grabbed the cell phone, hit a speed dial, and waited.  
  
When the line was opened with silence, merely attending with no need for words, he suddenly didn’t know what to say. Blanked out.  
  
“Spike, I know it’s you,” murmured her voice patiently. Quiet because she’d be in some class, others around, interrupted by the sound or vibration of her phone.  
  
That sense of context made it real and freed him. Not Bit; but yes, Bit! Needed her: right away. Now!  
  
He didn’t know what he said. Her reply was made in the same calm murmur: “I’m coming.”  
  
Finally he set the phone down without dropping it. Kneeling by the desk, he poured two of the wake-up pills from the vial and downed them with as much liquor as he could take at one go. Waited for it to hit, for something to be real to him besides the dream. Went on methodically drinking because that was all he could think of to do.  
  
Nothing from memory. Not a dreaded future. This had been real, present, now. Never had one like that before. And surely never wanted it again.  
  
No defenses whatever.  
  
He knew if that voice called to him again, he'd go.  
  
**********  
  
Mike noticed at once: Spike was paying no attention to him. However, Spike was paying no attention to anything. Wearing only bluejeans, Spike was in the wandering around stage of drunk, and smelled scared. Instantly enraged, lacking only a target, Mike admitted the near non-presence of not-Dawn, the Lady with nearly no smell who looked down her nose at everything, even things bigger than she was. Mike growled, “What’s happened?”  
  
She was sitting primly on one of the pink plastic chairs, watching Spike pace the office like some wind-up toy. Aimless motion. Couldn’t be still. Eyes unfocused, might as well be blind. Bottle in fist, nearly to the tossing-away point.  
  
The Lady remarked, “We have another player.”  
  
Mike made a disgusted noise at the cool non-answer and stepped right into Spike’s pacing route knowing it might get him hit. Didn’t care. Spike wasn’t mad, though, which wasn’t right. Finding an obstruction, he simply stopped.  
  
So Mike hit him a good one on the side of the face. Spike rocked back a little, was all. Didn’t come back at him. Seemed to barely notice--too anesthetized by the liquor, maybe. So Mike popped him another one. Spike took that as a hint to choose another direction and started circling the desk.  
  
Standing in his way again, Mike demanded, “What the hell is wrong with you?”  
  
Spike said nothing, waiting for his path to clear; but the Lady commented in that dry, passionless voice, “He can’t say. He’s being blocked.”  
  
“So what the hell are you doing about it?”  
  
“Thinking,” said the Lady tartly, as though certain she was alone in doing that.  
  
“Then do something else, because that’s no good!”  
  
Spike said roughly, “Let her be,” and pushed Mike aside, continuing to move.  
  
So Mike put him down, good and hard, and then sat on him for good measure. As Mike had thought, Spike had wanted to be stopped: he curled forward and hid--arms folded over his head, forehead against Mike’s knee. Safe, because locked down. Mike understood that. And at least Spike was finally acknowledging Mike was there. But the dreadful fear smell, of almost human intensity, didn’t let up. Tasted like fear, too, when Mike had a small nip at the thick of his arm. Other things, though, too--too subtle for smelling. Still not the anger Mike expected. Something nearer to collapse. A blankness that was way past blurred sight, way past liquor-stupid. Maybe the block the Lady had spoken of.  
  
“Who’s done this?” Mike demanded.  
  
“That’s what I’m trying to determine. I do _not_ like my instruments being interfered with.” Bright color came into her cheeks, and her blue eyes snapped. Looked nearly human there for a second. Then it all flattened out again, pulsebeat dropping back into calm. “Spike. Replay it.”  
  
“No,” Spike responded hoarsely.  
  
“Just once more,” the Lady wheedled.  
  
“No.”  
  
But they both went still, and plainly something was going on between them. The Lady sat forward in her chair, intent. Mike used their distraction to take another taste. Happy with that but also took meaning from it. Not Spike pacing: his demon, agitated, yet not showing. Spike was doing the hiding part.  
  
After a few minutes more thought, the Lady stood and reached across the desk to collect the cell phone and tapped in a long string of numbers. Following some sputtering from the other end, she said, “I have no interest in the time there or your plans. Spike’s been bespelled. The accent is British and of your generation, I think; a Chaos Mage of considerable power; thinks in terms of ‘tricks,’ phrases include ‘my dear boy’-- Ah. That’s at least a beginning. How well do you know him?” The Lady listened awhile, then said, “Recently?” She listened some more. Giles was being indignant and using what, for him, was bad language. Mike could hear the other end of the conversation well enough despite intermittent static.  
  
Had a name to keep in his mind. Poking at Spike’s shoulder, he said it aloud: “Ethan Rayne.”  
  
Moving one arm slightly, Spike blinked at him. “Oh. That git.”  
  
That seemed encouraging. Mike got up and took the phone. “It’s Mike. Describe the bastard.”  
  
Giles’ voice asked, “Who are you? And who have I been talking with?”  
  
Mike thought answering would probably make things go faster. “Spike’s my sire. And the Lady, she says she’s Dawn’s ma. Come into her, now won’t leave. A Power, everybody says. So what does the son of a bitch look like?” Mike found corollaries for each item and came up with a resemblance to a know-it-all captain he’d been acquainted with, back in the before. _Looks like Captain Hawkins, if the jumped-up asshole had survived to forty_ would do for a picture in his mind. “Anything still left around here, would have his smell on it?”  
  
“I have no idea, and what do you mean, Spike’s your sire? Is he killing again? Is he--”  
  
Since Giles seemed unable to supply any more useful information, Mike ended the call and set the phone back on the desk. Then he noticed the Lady glaring at him, like she might turn him into something. He didn’t know if a Power could do that. Not real clear on what a Power was, actually, except that they thought pretty high of themselves despite having manners not fit for a barnyard.  
  
The phone buzzed. The Lady picked it up and listened. “Yes, substantially. No, I have no reason to think so. No, he eliminated all of them…. Quite certain: Dawn was a witness.”  
  
Mike quit listening. The subject had no interest for him. He asked Spike, “Want me to get the pads laid out?”  
  
Leaning on an elbow, Spike looked at his watch. “Fuck. Is she here?”  
  
“The Slayer, you mean. Not yet. ‘Manda and Rona are, though. Maybe Kennedy. Didn’t see her. And two squads up and waiting, like you said.”  
  
Mike could no longer smell the frightened. Only the drunk.  
  
“Fuck.” Rubbing his eyes, Spike got slowly to his feet, then carefully bent again, holding the corner of the desk, to collect his shirt from the floor. “Tell Huey to get the gear out: that’s his to see to.”  
  
“I can take the training, if you want. Dance with the Slayer a bit. Don’t think she’d dust me.” That last, Mike had meant as a small joke, but Spike didn’t take it that way.  
  
“Slayer’s mine, Michael. You and ‘Manda lead out for the rest.”  
  
Mike went as far as the door. “You sure that’s a good idea.”  
  
“Hell, no. But that’s how we play it.” Spike’s attention shifted, and they both noticed the Lady holding out her locket on its chain.  
  
When Spike made no move to take it, she said, “You are our instrument. I will not allow you to become another’s.”  
  
“Yeah, sure. That makes me feel all kinds of better.” Pointing at the locket, Spike asked, “Little bit of clay gonna keep my head all secure?”  
  
“Perhaps not. However, I’ve now identified the player. On this plane, his power may be considerable but in my own realm of action--”  
  
Spike was lighting a cigarette. Breathing smoke, he said, “Fine, you got your name. What you came for. Great idea: you go home, leave Bit to help us clean up the mess. You do that.”  
  
The Lady let the locket slide to the desk. Showing a small smile, she said, “Nice try, Spike.” Then she went knuckles-down, arms braced, on the desktop, asking, “Why do you want her and not me?”  
  
“We’re used to each other’s ways, Bit and me. She and my demon mostly get on. She looks after me. Want her here now.”  
  
Not until I have what I want!”  
  
“And what’s that, pet?” Spike inquired, nasty and silky.  
  
The Lady turned bright red and stomped out, past Mike, chin high. Couldn't smell anything off her, but that was no news. Mike figured Spike had things besides smell to go by.  
  
“And that was real bright, too,” Mike commented. “Piss her off, why don’t you.”  
  
Studying his cigarette coal, Spike admitted, “Think maybe I did. Have to admit, there’s worse than her. She’s a wretched bully if she’s let to be. Used to having her own way, and what high lady isn’t? But however loud she gets, she’s always left me my own choice. Never tried to force me, that I know of, anyway.”  
  
“Yeah. Guess so. I’ll get that all set up, then.”  
  
Answering Mike’s concern, Spike responded, “I’ll be all right. Just took me to a place…. I’ll be fine.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Going toward the barrier gap, Mike looked back and saw Spike drop the locket chain around his neck.  
  
**********  
  
Wasn’t true nobody had ever cared for his demon: Bit did, Spike reminded himself, dizzily trying to locate his boots. Properly cautious of it, she was, Bit, but she liked it well enough and except for the brief time of marking her, his demon showed no special interest in her either, which was the way it should be.  
  
 _But not the same_ , memory told him uneasily. Not the same as sharing in full measure the joy of busting things up, tossing things high just to watch them go smash. What he’d been fighting in himself, beating down every day, from the time he’d set himself to the ordering of Sunnydale. Part of him was sick of self-discipline, sick of being forethoughtful and reliable. Sick of meeting expectations, including his own. Sick of even trying to keep track of every fucking detail.  
  
Part of him sided with the Powers. Just wanted to say the hell with it and let it go. How much of that was him and how much was Lady Gates nudging at him, he’d never tried to sort out, except to acknowledge that some of it was him, no question. The pushing hadn’t put there anything that wasn’t there before.  
  
Demon, it was restless and angry, being mostly denied at every turn. Sometimes got past him, exploded at whatever he found to hand. Like in Willow’s bedroom. Like the other night, putting down whatever he found in reach. And harder to control without the balance of the soul. Hard to feel the need for the restraint, the rules and limits he’d set on himself. Only ideas, things he had to make himself mindful of, not things he felt.  
  
And maybe this new git getting at him some of that time.  
  
As avid for destruction as Spike’s demon, praising and affirming it, rewarding it with that deep satisfaction when the lattice of rules came suddenly unglued and he just struck out. Feeding it what it wanted. What not even Bit would give it: freedom to act out its nature. As though he were no more than a fledge. Relapsing to an earlier state, losing what he’d learned and fought for.  
  
He thought that was the trick of spelling a vamp: to latch onto some secret wish, some weakness already within him. Turning an inclination into a compulsion. Making him not only accept it but want it.  
  
Despite the years since the chip being all about not wanting what he wanted. Wanting another thing more. Training himself up with the blinding pain as limit and correction until he’d believed he could do without it and still be fine. Set the soul aside and still understand enough to follow the course he’d set for himself. To make this new thing well enough to have it survive his supervision and stand on its own. Continue beyond him.  
  
But he still wanted what he wanted. That hadn’t changed and never would. Because demons didn’t. Not so much evil, like he’d learned to think of it, but a creature of chaos. Deeply inclined to destruction of any order he found himself within. Breaking through the barriers. Doing the impossible, the forbidden.  
  
Shutting a Hellmouth. Loving a Slayer.  
  
The only thing better than killing one. Two, he’d done, so he should know. And it wasn’t in him to regret any of it.  
  
But he’d never imagined anybody loving him for that, or that in him. Fear, respect, maybe--those were appropriate responses. He understood them. But the self-assured love bypassed all that and spoke to his demon direct. And his demon understood that and responded in kind.  
  
Couldn’t get at him except through what was already there.  
  
That was what scared him.  
  
For the first time, he seriously thought he might not last this out. Capable of imagining it only. Not capable of the execution. And leave everything worse than if he’d never begun.  
  
Which was what Digger had contended all along. That Spike didn’t have the “bottom” to stay the whole course. That it was just stupid naïve vanity to suppose otherwise. Might be Digger was right and the farther along Spike pushed his plan, the worse it would be when it inevitably got away from him. Therefore the best thing Spike could do was abandon it immediately before the repercussions of failure spread to everyone he cared about. Because they’d trusted him. Taken him at his word and depended on him. And therefore caught in the backlash when it all started coming apart.  
  
Nobody he could say this to. Nobody who could offer any reassurance he’d believe. And belief the only thing moving it all forward or holding it together.  
  
Dressed and still drunk, full of manic, shaky alertness from the pills, he crossed the factory, seeing that the gear from the Magic Box annex was nearly all set up and Mike and the three SITs beginning to demonstrate lead and second in a fight, dull weapons only. The SITs watching him pass: this wasn’t what they wanted from him. Wanted him showing them something new, not just going through the motions of what they already knew, reflexes trained into habit. Wanted edged weapons drill, that he didn’t think he was capable of today, not without somebody getting hurt. Couldn’t think through all the cautions, not in motion. Could second Buffy, maybe, when she came. That could be all right and nobody hurt.  
  
Could do. Maybe an answer.  
  
His healed right hand riding the descending rail, he went into the dormitory--mostly cleared out except for the fledges and a few fucking by pairs or bunches: the usual, he didn’t bother noticing--and singled out Sue. Woke her, drew her aside as far as a bench, the way he had before. She seemed a little less dopy than last time, assuming he was in any state to judge that. All the bruising and scabs were gone, anyway. And having fresh clothes moderated much of the stink. Mostly, she smelled like Deuce, whose clothes they’d been before.  
  
He asked her, “You fed up all right?”  
  
“Is there more?”  
  
Should have expected that. He shook his head. “Not till tomorrow. One delivery a day, comes in on the plane from L.A. in the morning.”  
  
“They say other masters have cows, you can just drink from them anytime--”  
  
“We don’t do that here,” Spike replied evenly.  
  
She looked for a second as though she’d argue, but kept silence, swallowed it back. She’d learned that much, then.  
  
“Want you to do something hard, and something easy,” Spike told her.  
  
“What’s the easy part?” she asked warily.  
  
“SITs are up on the floor now, taking my crew of pathetic wankers through patrolling drill. Lead and second, point and flank. What you lot had down pretty much the first evening. When we ran into those Bringers.”  
  
“Yeah. I remember that. That’s easy. You want--” She stopped herself, changed phrasing. “What do you want me to do, Spike?”  
  
Not assuming. Not thinking it would be a good thing to show off, get ahead of him, before he’d had a chance to say. Coming along fine, for a fledge.  
  
“Like you think,” Spike said, indirectly praising both her quickness and her holding back. “Go up and train with the crew, in the colors. ‘F even a fledge can pick it up, they’ll try harder. Keep to it, if you do.”  
  
“Yeah, all right. I can do that. And the hard part? Do I have to keep trueface shed? Because I can’t--”  
  
“No, that’s all right. Doesn’t matter within these walls.”  
  
“What’s the hard part, then?”  
  
“Don’t eat anybody.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
Spike waited while she thought it out. Finally she looked up, met his eyes. “I’ll try, Spike. Try my best. Could I be sort of toward the back? So they’re not in striking distance?”  
  
“Need you to the front, love. Where they all can see you. ‘Manda and Rona and Ken, they know striking distance, and they all have their tasers. You won’t hurt nobody, even if you go for them. But I’d like to see if you can keep yourself from that. Let you come on a sweep if you can make it all the way through.”  
  
“Even truefaced?”  
  
Spike nodded.  
  
She looked both eager and anxious. “How long?”  
  
“An hour. Maybe a little more.”  
  
She took a quick, nervous breath. “I’ll try. I’m fed up all right: I should be able to keep from going after the first warm meat I find.” She cocked her head. “I can hear their heartbeats. Isn’t that weird? It will be so strange…. But I’ll do my best, Spike.”  
  
“Never expected any different. Come on, then.”  
  
Weaving among the mattresses, she asked him, “How can you be this drunk and keep focus?”  
  
“Practice, love. More than a century’s practice. S’my birthday, you know: Watcher said so.”  
  
“Celebrating, then.” She nodded as if that made sense.  
  
“Something like that. Now, don’t you look too sharp, right off. Ease into it a little.”  
  
“Got you.”  
  
She was shaping fine. As Mike was.  
  
He found hope in such tokens.  
  
**********  
  
  
For no good reason except being reminded, Buffy had been angsting all afternoon about her 17th birthday.  
  
How could she have been so dumb?  
  
And how could Angel have not known a seventeen-year-old would be that dumb and exercise adult (250, that was adult, right?) judgment and restraint and not frelling fuck her?  
  
Had he known about the “perfect happiness” clause at that point? How could he not have known?  
  
Driving toward the factory after an unscheduled but unavoidable counselor-parent conference occasioned by a student bringing a nail file to school (nail files being currently categorized as weapons of deadly force (WDF), and the penalty for being caught with a WDF was summary expulsion and therefore failing all your classes), Buffy decided she was gonna ask Spike. He’d been around then, right? Sure he had: in the wheelchair, up at that same factory he’d occupied now, though she hadn’t known that at the time--about the wheelchair, anyway. With Dru-goddam-silla, a thought that set her blood boiling right there, that crazy vamp skank he’d trailed around after for better than a century, so what did that say about his judgment and taste in women?  
  
In short, she was spoiling for a fight, and since Angel wasn’t available, pretty nearly anybody would do.  
  
Toting a gym bag containing her workout clothes, she stomped up to the sentry alcove (slight sense of accomplishment when she recognized the sentry as Emil) and demanded where she could go to change.  
  
Big Emil looked nonplussed. “Office?” he suggested.  
  
Big open space, glass walls: the height of privacy. Fulking factory didn’t have restrooms, or if it once had, they’d torn them out like they’d torn out everything else that made the place habitable for anybody but vamps. No restroom, no lockers, no shower. A tad short-sighted, maybe?  
  
That reminded her of the glasses, which made her snicker: she’d pretty much promised not to razz Spike about them, but that wouldn’t limit Dawn, whenever she was allowed to surface and first caught sight of them: Dawn would never let him live them down.  
  
“Thanks,” she said to Emil absently, and went inside. Vamps and SITs were squaring off against each other at the opposite side of the floor. Buffy gave them a cursory glance, passing by to the gap in the barrier--mostly confirming that Spike was there, which he was: leaning on the far wall, talking to a female vamp…who was Suzanne. Former SIT. Frowning, Buffy couldn’t decide offhand if that was a good thing or a bad thing. She’d have to think about it. She was inclined to think “bad thing,” though, because Spike hadn’t shown any sign of noticing she’d arrived. She was fifteen minutes late: he should have been watching for her. Anxiously. Eagerly, even. Instead of obliviously chatting with some nubile, fresh-faced (albeit game-faced) she-vamp.  
  
In the office, she laid out her sweats and sneaks, then turned off the light. Wouldn’t actually help much, given vamp vision, but it made her feel somewhat more secure. For extra concealment, she sat between the desk and the wall to pull off her counselor attire and wriggle into her workout togs and sneaks, that Giles had always called “trainers.” No mirror, of course, to check her hair or makeup. So she turned the light back on to inspect herself in the inadequate mirror of her compact, deciding her hair was gonna be all over her face in two seconds of moderate exercise and pulling out all the pins and securing it with a knotted scarf, fountain style, in a topknot pony-tail.  
  
Then she tramped back into the open space to start her bends and stretches.  
  
The place, she had to admit, had some deficiencies as a training space. For one thing, the floor was cement. No give. No bounce. And frickin’ cold. If she was gonna use it full-time, she needed to invest in leg warmers and sneaks with thicker soles.  
  
The half-light provided by the painted-over windows and the high strip windows above was also non-standard but she could live with that, she decided. She patrolled at night anyway. So perfect lighting conditions for training weren’t a requirement.  
  
The vamps were now facing off against each other by teams--one team unorganized, the other divided into triangular fighting units of lead and seconds. The triads were making figurative mincemeat of the singletons, even though the seconds kept getting in the lead’s way, each of them wanting to engage independently and first. The trouble wasn’t getting vamps to fight--it was getting anybody to hang back. As Buffy finished her warm-up and strolled nearer, Mike had called the mock battle off and was trying, with two of the SITs, to show how a fighting triad was supposed to behave while everybody else stood around and looked bored…or stared nervously as Buffy passed.  
  
Buffy awarded herself extra points for recognizing Mike. She didn’t think he was making much headway.  
  
“OK,” she said to Spike, “how do you want to work this, coach?”  
  
Spike shut his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall as though she’d asked him something impossibly difficult. She noticed then that he’d been drinking.  
  
“Fine,” she said, swinging away. “We don’t have to do this. I don’t even have to be here. It was all your idea anyway.”  
  
Spike shot out a stiff-arm shove. Buffy stumbled and couldn’t catch herself, landing on knees and the flat of her hands. She protested, “Hey!”  
  
“Balance needs work, Slayer.”  
  
She checked he was still against the wall before warily rising. “Not gonna play around with you, Spike. This is mine: for me. Not to make you look good in front of the troops, wow ignorant teenies by showing a bit of flash. What I need is a trainer or else a mobile dummy, either one. By the smell, I guess I know which one you’ve opted for.”  
  
Spike didn’t say anything. Buffy thought he was counting.  
  
He pushed away from the wall, commenting mildly, “Right you are: one dummy coming up. Let’s get your hands taped first.”  
  
“Look, I only have an hour--”  
  
“Only take longer if you stand around bitching about it,” he responded, so she trailed along behind him to a bench and straddled it sullenly while he, seated facing her, made a meticulous job of taping her hands.  
  
“You’re right,” he said, without looking up. “This is for you and about you. It’s plain you don’t like the audience. So next time you come, they won’t be here. Figure it out as we go. No need to get your knickers all in a bunch about it.”  
  
“What are you doing, drinking in the middle of the day?” she challenged indignantly.  
  
“Well, had myself a bit of a bad dream earlier. Needed to settle myself down, after.”  
  
“When you _knew_ I was coming,” Buffy barged on, unheeding, then caught what he’d said. “A bad dream? You figure a bad dream is an excuse to get drunk? And when did you ever need an excuse anyway?”  
  
Spike finished taping her right hand and began on her left. “If it wasn’t for the fact you’re a blessed saint descended, I might think you were trying to piss me off.”  
  
“Well, sitting and having you tape up my hands isn’t exactly my idea of a good time either,” Buffy shot back, shifting restlessly on the bench. “Tell me: did Angel know about the curse?”  
  
“Don’t understand, pet.”  
  
“When he and I, you know, and then he went all sarcastic and Angelus, that once, did he know?”  
  
“Hold your hand still, pet.”  
  
“But you were there, _here_ , afterward, he must have said something about whether it was what he expected or if it was a surprise or something!”  
  
His face had gone tight and expressionless. “You’d have to ask him. Wouldn’t take Angelus’ word, myself, that water’s wet.”  
  
“Sure, like I’m gonna ask him about something like that, after all this time! I’m asking you!”  
  
“Don’t recall. Had my own problems then. ‘F he wanted to natter on about the Slayer, wasn’t nothing to me. Not then.” He shook his head. “Don’t want to get into this with you, Buffy. Too many fishhooks.”  
  
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”  
  
“Means…. No. Not gonna start with that. Let it alone.”  
  
“This is important to me! Where do you get off telling me to--”  
  
He smacked her ear open-handed and leaned back, avoiding her answering swing. Stepping clear of the bench, he said, “Too much talk. Come at me. Keep on your feet, if you can.”  
  
He wasn’t fighting straightforward or fair. It was all lean and duck, sliding away, dropping into a roll, bouncing back. And tripping her. She was on the floor almost more than on her feet. Trying any kind of kick was an invitation to have her support foot hooked, and land hard on her rear. On the cement. He dodged a lunge by dropping face-down and yanked both ankles out from under her. She made a point of dropping on him elbows first, and braced: that slowed him down for a couple of minutes. Dumped yet again, she folded her arms and refused to rise. “You’re not doing this right!”  
  
He stood comfortably hipshot just beyond kicking range. “I’m not the one with my arse on the slab. What’s it say, that I can get outside a fifth of Jack and still have better balance than you do?”  
  
“But all you’re doing is falling down in inventive ways. Big deal. Anybody can do that!”  
  
“Taking you with me, ain’t I? The point of this exercise, pet, is who’s left standing. So take a stance and hold it.”  
  
She got up, lame and irate. “What, nail my feet to the floor? So you can dance around and make me look like an idiot?”  
  
“Not the point,” he said, exasperated, looking off to where the rest were doing unarmed drills. “SITs, they want edged weapons practice. How about you take them through--”  
  
Taking advantage of his inattention, Buffy bounced on the toes of her left foot and spun into a whip kick with her right. Her right heel connected with the back of Spike’s neck. That would show him! He went down loose: not guarding himself at all. His head hit the floor with an audible _crack_. He didn’t move.  
  
Buffy was just bending to make sure he was all right when she was grabbed from the side and flung ten yards, airborne--nearly back to the east wall. With time to adjust, she landed in a balanced crouch, ready to spring off in any direction.  
  
All the vamps were gathered at mid-floor. Standing by Spike, still down, Mike was game-faced, glaring at her. The SITs were edging away, to be between Buffy and the vamps if things went bad. Or worse: they’d already achieved bad.  
  
Mike shouted, “That’s no kind of training. That’s pure meanness and spite. You got no business doing him like that!”  
  
“Mike,” Amanda was saying, taser extended. “Back off, Mike. I’ll take you down if I have to.”  
  
“You can try,” Mike challenged, not shifting his attention an inch. The rest of the vamps, all yellow-eyed in the big dim space, were massing up behind him but waiting on a word nobody had yet given.  
  
Knowing that how she handled this was critical, Buffy straightened and walked straight at him at a deliberate, balanced gait. She kept Mike within her peripheral vision--if he came at her, she’d know it; but she centered on Spike. In the next step, she’d have to choose to square off against Mike or put her back to him.  
  
As she took the step and started to go down on her knees beside Spike, a vamp flashed past her and gave Mike the sort of rough shove he’d given Buffy, except that Mike didn’t move. “Are you crazy?” the vamp demanded: Sue’s voice. “Spike wouldn’t want this! ‘Manda, back off. Everybody, back off. Spike would--”  
  
Mike backhanded her. She hit the west wall, fell in a huddle of splayed limbs, and didn’t move.  
  
Spike had finally started to stir: forehead bloody, head bent, he pushed off the floor, rocked, and ended in a sort of sprawled sitting. Meanwhile Mike had called all vamps off to the short south end. Buffy didn’t care what they were doing down there. She pulled Spike to lean against her shoulder. “You took your eye off the weapon.”  
  
He touched fingertips to his forehead, then automatically licked them. Gross, but predictable. “Guess so.”  
  
“We didn’t plan this very well,” Buffy commented.  
  
“Not a good day,” Spike responded, using her shoulder as a brace to push to his feet so he could look around and assess the situation. “Sue’s down.”  
  
“Mike hit her. I don’t think Mike has quite grasped the concept of training.”  
  
“Yeah…. No, you keep clear,” Spike told the SITs, waving them back.  
  
“But shouldn’t we check on her?” Amanda asked, the other SITs turning with her.  
  
“No need. Hasn’t dusted. She’ll be fine. Don’t put temptation in her way. She’s a fledge: she’d just come at you and then there’d be another right mess to be sorted. Leave her be.” Hand still on Buffy’s shoulder, Spike was silent awhile. Then he said quietly, “Could have gone better. Worth trying again, you think?”  
  
“I loathe birthdays!”  
  
“Never paid ‘em much mind, myself. Side mirror’s nice, though. Mice, they’ll enjoy the cupcake. Be awhile, probably, before all the mice can be got rid of. Harder to catch than rats. Taste about the same. What there is of ‘em….” He looked to see the disgusted face she obligingly made. “Can take everything back, if that’s what you want.”  
  
“By now, Anya probably has everything stripped and painted and shelves up to yo,” Buffy reflected gloomily. “Leave it all as it is. Let me think about it some more. We’ll talk about it tonight, on patrol, all right?”  
  
He was turned half away, his expression distant, his eyes vague. “Your call, Slayer.”  
  
“Spike? You mad at me?”  
  
“Had better days. The waiting’s hard….” Standing straighter, he cupped his temple and started toward the back, asking, “Name Ethan Rayne mean anything to you?”  
  
“That prancing lightweight! Ruined Halloween!” Trotting to catch up, Buffy pulled at the tape ends on her right hand. “And then the band candy! That inspired my mom to…get groiny with _Giles_ on the hood of a police car. Twice!”  
  
Spike looked around, somewhere between pained and bemused. “That a fact? Not quite the impression I’d got.”  
  
“Of Mom? I certainly hope not!”  
  
“Of any of them, actually. Tell me about it.”  
  
Buffy picked more tape and started unwinding. It would have to be cut, but she was too edgy and ill at ease to wait. “Actually, you should remember the first one. I chose this great dress, ancient fashion, real fainting-lady-wear, and Willow was a ghost, and Xander was soldier-guy.”  
  
“Yeah, I do recall that dress. And you were acting all girly and helpless and I didn’t know what the hell you were trying to pull. Don’t recall Red doing a ghost, though.”  
  
“Well, you couldn’t see her, idiot: she was a ghost!”  
  
“Like invisible Buffy?” Spike asked, all innocence.  
  
She felt her face go hot. “Not exactly.” Tucking her arm through his, she hurried on, “All the costumes went real. Ours, anyway. Courtesy of Ethan Rayne. Old pal of Gileses, from his Ripper days.”  
  
“Figured they were close: gave Rupert an interesting day as a Fyarl. Luckily, I speak Fyarl.... Never saw the git, just heard Rupert ranting on about him. Fyarl profanity's pretty colorful.... Sounds harmless enough. Might be he’s come up in the world. Has minions now, seems like. Or had.”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“Those Fire Mages. Seems they were Rayne’s.”  
  
“But he’s a Chaos Mage.”  
  
“Confusing, innit?” he responded amiably.  
  
They’d reached the office. Spike went in first and started rummaging through a top drawer. Picking up a pill vial, he turned on the light and squinted at the label.  
  
“Headache?” Buffy asked, carefully neutral. At least the bleeding had stopped. A purple bruise had started to spread.  
  
“If it’s not one thing, it’s something else,” Spike responded, shaking out two pills and popping them into his mouth. “I’ll be fine for patrol.”  
  
So that was all right. Still, she found herself asking again, “You’re not mad?”  
  
“We’ve been better. Mostly not connecting right, and that’s not your doing….” He smiled. “I expect you’ll find some way to make it up to me.”  
  
Talking around the edges had again brought them to the center.  
  
“Oh, yes,” Buffy said most sincerely.


	10. Accommodations

Spike knew Buffy wasn’t comfortable with his bringing Mike along on patrol, any more than Mike was comfortable being brought. They barely exchanged a word, as if they each were pretending the other wasn’t there. And after decking him in good order at the factory, Buffy was being all polite, enough to make a pig gag, which pretty much ruled out her asking the blunt question _What the hell is he doing here?_ or saying in so many words that having Mike at her back made her itchy as hell.  
  
Spike wasn’t all that pleased with either one of them, and he considered their putting up with each other as part of their penance. How could anybody expect him to keep track of the little things, like the new wide-scale blood delivery or the progress on recruitment, if he couldn’t depend on the big things not going haywire the minute he took his eyes off them?  
  
Plain enough that they were jealous of each other, and neither about to call it by its name, which maybe he was dumb not to have expected and headed off, but there you were. Also plain that Buffy wasn’t easy being around vamps, and maybe never would be, for all her trying, which Spike gave her due credit for, even though it’d turned her all snappish and surly, and she’d flashed out at him for it. Better him than dusting one of his crew, which was the likely alternative. He could take it and she knew that, so she’d done as well as she could, considering. Spike wasn’t put out at her on his own account.  
  
Hadn’t been all that quick on the uptake himself, this afternoon: all shaken up _and_ drunk on top of it, trying to get through the time any old how, and that hadn’t been enough. So his fault as much as anybody’s, what had happened and nearly happened.  
  
And then there was Michael, beginning to get the feel of his authority, taking a stance, just as he should…but without the patience or the sense to finesse the Slayer the way you had to. Seeing her as a threat and then unable and unwilling to back off when she wouldn’t. Going after her on Spike’s account, as though Mike’s claim should override hers.  
  
Big mess.  
  
They got through the patrol without encountering anything but three dumb fledges and later a pair of rambunctious Rolfin, that the Slayer always made a point of taking out despite the fact that they preyed only on domestic pets, no threat to humans, and specially liked the fighting breeds like pit bulls, Dobermans, which would have inclined Spike to let them be if it’d been left up to him, which it wasn’t. So fine, they took out the Rolfin in good order, so all the fluffy spaniels and Pekingese could sleep safer in their posh little beds. All one to him. On patrol, it was the Slayer’s call.  
  
Cleaning her sword before replacing it in the sheath she wore over her shoulders, Buffy said, “That’s enough for tonight. Thanks for the help.”  
  
Spike nodded, catching each of them by the arm, holding them in place. "Then I'll have my say."  
  
“What?” Buffy asked, uneasy but not pulling away.  
  
“Oh, hell, Spike,” was Mike’s contribution. He knew what was coming, or ought to. Nothing except what he was due.  
  
“Michael, you laid hands on the Slayer, that I’d given my personal bond that nobody would so much as look cross-eyed at her whenever she was up there. And you knew it. And did it anyway.”  
  
At least Mike didn’t whine that he’d been provoked or make excuses. Shoulders sagging a little, frowning at the ground, he said, “Fine. Not in front of her, though.”  
  
“Anyplace I say.”  
  
“Yeah. Fine.”  
  
Slayer protested, “He thought he was defending you.”  
  
“Don’t give a goddam what he thought. He’s crossed me, in public, and I won’t have it.”  
  
“Then you two sort it out however you want. I don’t have to watch--”  
  
“You stay put, Slayer,” Spike ordered, quick and flat. And though she was surprised, she left the call to him, which he appreciated. “Now, Michael. Slayer, she’s what’s important here. She takes a notion to dust me, I won’t lift a hand against it. Nor let anybody who answers to me do it neither. Only reason I’m standing here is on account of she’s chosen to go against everything she believes, everything she thinks is right, and let me be. Could have dusted me a hundred different times, and most of those times, I rightly deserved it, according to the rules she goes by. But she still gave me a pass.”  
  
“Because--” Buffy broke in.  
  
“You shut up, Slayer. I’m putting this to Michael how he has to understand.” Returning his attention to Mike, Spike went on grimly, “The right I have over you, that same right she has over me. I continue by her sufferance, that she can change any time, and I got nothing to say about it. And nobody else has the right to interfere with that. It’s between me and her. Now do you hear me, Michael.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“And do you understand it?”  
  
“I guess. Yeah.”  
  
Spike let go his arm, still holding Buffy’s. “Now, Slayer. Michael here is my declared get--I’ve claimed him of my blood and of my making. That means you got any problem with him, you come to me. You don’t deal with him except as I say. He’s mine, and I stand responsible for whatever he does. He gets out of line, that’s mine to deal with, not yours. Today, he was out of line, and you let him get by with it, which is more than he deserves and only because you don’t know our ways. I stand answerable for it.” Spike took Amanda’s taser from his pocket and slapped it into Buffy’s hand, directing, “Do me.”  
  
Together, Buffy and Mike protested, “No!”  
  
“You shut up, the both of you. I want this settled. Don’t never want to deal with such again, not from either of you. Buffy.” Spike held her appalled eyes, trying to make her see and accept that this was necessary. “You can take me out when I’m not looking; you can do this.”  
  
“No!” Mike blurted again. “I’m the one was out of line. If somebody has to answer for it, it should be me. Don’t.”  
  
“You’ll get yours, boyo,” Spike said coldly. “Never doubt it. But Slayer has first right, and nobody comes at you except through me. That’s what it means, that I’ve claimed you for mine. So you stand and you keep shut, you hear me?”  
  
“Don’t,” Mike said to Buffy. “Please.”  
  
Buffy stood looking back and forth between them. Then she flung the taser down. “I’m not part of your damn vamp games, and I’m not playing this one. Sorry, Spike, but no. I don’t shoot 200 watts into…somebody I love…just because somebody tells me to!”  
  
“Slayer chooses to give me a pass. Again,” Spike commented. In one quick motion, he scooped up the taser and gave Mike a charge in the small of his back. Mike went down like a felled pine. Graveyard grass was a better surface to land on than factory cement, Spike reflected, brushing the taser clean of grit before putting it away.  
  
To Buffy, standing all freeze-faced, looking down at Mike, Spike commented, “It’s not the watts, love, it’s the volts. ‘Round about 50,000. Put a chap down nicely for about five minutes, that will.”  
  
Buffy shrugged. “I just figured a two-hundred watt bulb is a pretty big bulb.”  
  
“And 50,000 volts is pretty much like being struck by lightning.” He slid the taser back in his pocket. “Happens, he’s never taken a taser charge. About time he did. Next time one of the SITs tells him to stand clear, he’ll have a little more respect for it. Thing is, pet…Mike loves me in his own peculiar fashion. Not always smart about it. No more than anybody.”  
  
“I see that now. Then how could you…?”  
  
“Letting him off easy wouldn’t be a kindness. Only be worse the next time. Maybe somebody dead. He has to learn how to do. According to the way vamps see things. Just as glad you let me off, though--would have been a bit much on top of everything else, today.”  
  
“But you said--” Buffy began, then slapped her hands on her legs in frustration. “I’m never gonna understand this!”  
  
“Likely not. And maybe a mistake to try,” Spike acknowledged softly. “You stick to the ways you know, love. Don’t bother about the rest. That’s mine to see to. Maybe be best to go back to keeping it out of your way.”  
  
“I’m trying…to connect,” she protested.  
  
“Know you are. But maybe it’s not possible.”  
  
She came and hugged him close and kissed the side of his mouth when he turned his face away. “But it has to be possible.”  
  
“Yeah.” She’d think that, want that to be true. Didn’t make it so, though. But Spike wasn’t gonna argue. Things would be as they could be, and what anybody wanted didn’t come into it. “He’ll be coming to in a while now. You go on home. I’ll see to him.”  
  
“I can wait,” Buffy offered.  
  
“Love, bad enough I took him down in front of you. Be worse if you’re here to watch him stagger around, try to get himself working right again. Don’t think rubbing it in is really what you mean to do here.”  
  
“No. No, I guess. All right,” Buffy agreed uncertainly, and went off.  
  
His back sliding down a tombstone, Spike settled onto his heels and lit a cigarette, waiting for his unruly childe to wake.  
  
**********  
  
“Come in,” said the Slayer, opening the door.  
  
She smelled nervous but didn’t actually show it, and she wasn’t scared about giving him access to her claimed place. Wasn’t scared of him at all. Well, no reason she should be, Mike supposed, though from anybody else, it would have been an insult. Well, nervous was something and as good as he was apt to get, considering that the Slayer outranked him by a fair bit even despite being human.  
  
Mike had never been invited inside Casa Summers before and now wasn’t particularly sure he wanted to be, with Dawn absent. Nobody here he was much interested in talking to. He folded his arms, looking back toward his bike for no particular reason except not to be looking at her. Didn’t want to be rude, stare her right in the eyes like a challenge.  
  
“All right,” said the Slayer coolly, “I’ll come out.”  
  
Her house: she’d do what she pleased. It was nothing to Mike. Except that now he had an invite, he had a choice. That was different, he supposed.  
  
She hitched a hip on the porch railing, facing him. Tiny little thing; but strong as a vamp twice her size and could do the air stuff, the flips and twists, like Spike did. So even though her hands were empty, Mike was properly wary and respectful. Owned Spike like Spike owned him, so she was due respect--Spike had made that perfectly plain last night, after the patrol. So when she’d sent a summons up to the factory for him today, he came as soon as the sunlight faded. No reason not to.  
  
“You don’t like me much,” she said, opening with the obvious. Not waiting for an answer, she went on, “I don’t like any Sunnydale vamps except Spike, so we’re even there. But you’re important to Spike, and Spike’s important to me, so I thought we might have a talk. Try to come to some working arrangement.”  
  
“Don’t need no arrangement,” Mike replied. “You forbade me Dawn, and it’s been a couple weeks, anyway, since I smelled you on Spike. You just want to get another handle on him ‘cause he’s moved out of your reach.”  
  
She was silent, mouth all pursed up tight, for a minute. (Mike took note of her motions and changes of expression with quick side glances, still avoiding straight-on challenge stares.) She said grimly, “All right, that’s more true than not, even though I don’t like hearing it put that way. There’s a distance. Since he began this, he’s been all caught up in vamp things and trying to keep that all to himself. I think he thinks it’s safer that way. For us. Dawn and me and Willow, who live here. But the result is the distance. I don’t like it. So I’ve tried to mix into his stuff, and get him to keep mixing into mine, as much as possible. That’s not working and it just makes everything more complicated. Adds onto everything else he’s trying to keep track of. And I’m starting to think it’s more than he can do.”  
  
“So?” Mike said when she stopped. “What’s that to me?”  
  
“He’s not sleeping right. He’s taking those pills because days just aren’t long enough to get everything done no matter how he packs them and pushes himself. He--”  
  
“Spike manages fine,” Mike interrupted loyally. “It’ll be better, now he’s gonna lair up at the factory as a regular thing. And…and you got a problem with that, you take it to him. Not up to me.” Mike was real annoyed at himself for saying even as much as he had. Nearly as bad as Digger, she was, making him start blabbing stuff that was none of her concern. Or if it was, stuff Mike had no business telling her, anyhow. Up to Spike, to tell her or not.  
  
She stuck her hands in her sweater pockets. “I don’t understand. If we both care about Spike, there should be some common ground here. We should--”  
  
“What do you want, Slayer? Why’d you call me over here?”  
  
Again, the frown and the pursed mouth. “You’re not making this easy, Mike.”  
  
“What’s ‘this’? And why should I care if it’s easy or hard? You’re none of my concern, either way. Except as Spike tells me. He says I got no business mixing between you. So fine, I won’t. Now are you trying to tell me different?”  
  
She flung her hands. The sudden motion was unnerving, but Mike kept himself from reacting except to check her hands for a stake. “Mike, do you even realize that he loves you?”  
  
“Course he does: named me his get, let me feed from him. Gave me a district to run. Gave me his keepsake watch for my protection. I’m useful to him, as best I can be. Others, he assigns to do other things for him, but none of them is a blood connection so they don’t signify. Only me.”  
  
“He’s marked me,” she declared, like she thought that was some daring big thing to admit. “That should count for something!”  
  
“Makes you his cow,” Mike responded, with a wry glance, flick and away. “Signifies that, anyway. Marked himself for Dawn. Don’t bear no mark for you, not that I yet noticed. But,” he added quickly, “he _said_ you had same as sire’s rights over him, and gives you the respect of that; so I’m not saying different.”  
  
Buffy lifted a glance of rueful frustration and sadness. Still didn’t smell anger or antagonism from her, which was strange, seeing as how she’d been questioning his connection to Spike and insisting she had the stronger claim, which Mike hadn’t contended otherwise…out loud, anyway.  
  
She smelled nearly as nice as Dawn, though much more puzzling and therefore less attractive. Mike was pretty sure she didn’t like him. Then again, Dawn didn’t either, anymore, so that was probably no difference that signified.  
  
She said, “I’m not getting through to you at all, am I.”  
  
“Don’t know what you mean. Still don’t know what you want from me.”  
  
“What’s the air speed of a laden swallow?” she demanded suddenly.  
  
“European or African?” Mike responded, knowing that was the right answer.  
  
They looked at each other awhile. Then she shook her head.  
  
“Your logic is not of the earth logic. OK, I get that. Just tell me this: what Spike’s doing. What he’s wrecking everything else, and himself, to do. Is it worth it?”  
  
“He’s Master of Sunnydale. Doing what’s needed, for that,” Mike replied, not seeing what she was getting at. How could Spike be top predator and the eldest, strongest blood in the area, with the will and the ferocity to enforce his claim against all opposition (as was proper), and act any other way than he did?  
  
“I give up!” Buffy said, throwing her hands again. “You win!”  
  
Mike nodded politely although he was certain dominance hadn’t changed, so nobody had won. People were unaccountable. No making sense of them. No use even trying.  
  
“Thursday,” she said, “is Dawn’s birthday. We’re having a party here, after the class. Though she’s not even here. Though nobody that I know of likes Lady Gates very well. Spike says, ‘Have the party anyway,’ so we are. Dawn’s friends are invited…some of them, anyhow. The ones I know about. So you’re invited. Provided you can stay out of game face and don’t try to eat any of the other guests.”  
  
Mike frowned. Last he knew, Dawn was officially furiousfuckingmad at him and wouldn’t speak to him except under combat conditions. Didn’t bear his mark anymore, didn’t allow him to taste her, didn’t want to keep company with him. And to Lady Gates, he had no connection at all. Wasn’t even her birthday, as humans would reckon things. He didn’t think Powers had birthdays, being ageless and timeless. So why he should spend time on such a farce made no sense whatever. Yet the Slayer plainly meant he should, even setting aside her implication that he had no more command of his demon than a fledge would. Classing that as ignorance, not deliberate insult.  
  
“I’ll ask Spike. If he says come, I’ll come.”  
  
“Good enough,” said the Slayer, on a sigh. “See you later, then. At the class.”  
  
Mike thought that meant he should go, though he wasn’t entirely sure. He figured he’d best ask, since he didn’t want to be rude to Spike’s same-as-sire. “We done now?”  
  
“Yeah, Mike. Stick a fork in us, we’re done.”  
  
Taking the steps down to yard level in one long stride, Mike tried to shake his head free of confusion. Every once in awhile, she’d say something that was actually understandable--like about the swallow speed, and about the fork--so he couldn’t quite dismiss the rest as vaporous nonsense. Why couldn’t she talk plain, say what she meant, like Dawn did? And the SITs did, mostly?  
  
It was clear she’d wanted to, tried to. And simply couldn’t.  
  
Starting his bike, Mike decided to ask Spike about that too. Spike would make sense of it for him, or at least tell him how to do about it, which was all that signified.  
  
********  
  
As she approached the gym’s double doors, schlepping the remaining carton of the smell on her hip, Buffy could hear music. Which was therefore _loud_ music. And when she opened the righthand door, that same smell hit her like a breath from a bordello, not that she was absolutely sure a bordello was what she thought it was.  
  
Her dutiful errand was therefore what Giles would have called “carrying coals to Newcastle,” which Xander had explained to her as being like unto delivering an extra stooge, to make four.  
  
The stooges inside were not exercising, or only a few. Nearly all were dancing in bare or stocking feet. Or maybe they were exercising too, since quite a few were gathered doing high kicks, alternate feet, in time to the bass thunder of a boom box set on the bottom row of bleachers. Going toward it to set the carton down, Buffy squinted her eyes and made a wincing face at the volume and the similar intensity of the smell. Absolutely everybody must be wearing it, sweating it into the air. And there was a lot of everybody: the gym was at least half full.  
  
She climbed up the bleachers to get a view of the whole floor. From that perspective, she saw how a boom box could impersonate a rock band’s sound system: at least six were parked at intervals along the bottom tier, cranked up to the max. From behind and above, the volume seemed slightly less likely to make her ears bleed. She couldn’t discern a tune, apart from the pounding rhythm that made the bleachers bounce.  
  
There were even more people than she’d thought--over a hundred, few aged above eighteen--jerking in weaving throngs to the thundering beat. She still wasn’t sure which were exercising and which were dancing. Several flavors of stomping line dances were weaving through the recognizable jitter-buggers, frug-ers, and others doing dances she knew no names for: alone, in pairs, or loose clusters performing the same motions. One maybe-dance involved propellering your arms slowly backward and prancing on tiptoes while lifting the other knee smartly against the chest. The mutant offspring of Michael Jackson and Michael Flatley?  
  
Pungent as mothballs although more floral, the smell made it hard to focus or form thoughts. And the driving beat shattered any struggling vestige of thought, like reflections in a stomped puddle.  
  
Buffy was reasonably certain of only three things: (1) absolutely nobody was waltzing (2) she was facing dismissal and possible lawsuits for holding an unauthorized, unchaperoned orgy and/or riot on school property (3) she’d spotted Spike’s bike outside, so he was here…someplace. She caught sight of the occasional red/black blur, but they were just vamps and SITs having a wild good time. She awarded herself points for spotting (and recognizing) Mike. Modest points, because spotting him wasn't hard, since he was a head taller than any guy near enough for comparison, moving with characteristic vamp grace, strength, and energy. No Spike, though: not a platinum head anywhere.  
  
She wilted onto the high bench, knees together, feet apart (and tapping), trying to think what to do. Then Spike came bounding up the bleacher rows as though they were a set of stairs, grinning like a maniac. One sleeve of his scarlet button-down was torn and flapping. The other was completely gone. Before Buffy could enlist his help in solving the problem, she was part of it, her face locked between his cool hands to hold her still during the application of a ten-megaton kiss that went on for several forevers and involved tongue. After that she was too busy hauling his T-shirt free of his jeans waistband so she could get her hands up under there and find skin. Skin was important. Skin was good, cool against her heat. She wanted more of it.  
  
Seized by a perverse impulse, she started tickling and nearly sent them both crashing and bumping down all the tiers to the floor. Convulsing, Spike grabbed her wrists and forced them wide, so they were standing front to front like some interrupted non-standard tango, since they were looking into each other’s faces with loony expressions. Buffy lifted on her toes and licked his chin. Spike laughed and made some comment the music drowned. She felt him start to move and went along, wide-stepping down the rows hand in hand, Spike batting away her renewed threats of tickling.  
  
They latched onto a passing line dance that mainly involved skipping wide to the side and doing a complicated little triple-time hop/bounce at what seemed random intervals. Whenever the line paused in its galumphing progress, that was what you did before being jerked into motion again. Then for awhile they were surrounded by people doing vaguely Egyptian-frieze movements, lots of serpentine arms, undulating torsos, and chins pushed out and then snapped back, over one’s shoulder. Or maybe they were imitating wading birds. Anyway the motions were contagious and imitable, so they mirrored them, sinuously exaggerating each sway and glide.  
  
Most of the would-be Egyptian wading birds just looked herky-jerky. On Spike, whose eyes had kindled with a devilish gleam, it looked good. There was nothing that didn’t look good on Spike.  
  
Then Spike caught her waist and tossed her straight up. Buffy looked down at lots of kids looking up. Descending, she was caught and hurled high again--like being on a trampoline without needing to bounce. This time, to be doing something while airborne, she managed a half rotation and was caught from the back and sent off again with a definite spin in the release. So she tucked her arms tight against her sides and made a full 360 before falling back into Spike and set safely down before he staggered away, doubled over in laughter. The angle was good, so she jumped onto his back and executed a handstand on his shoulders, head-top to head-top, holding the pose as he straightened beneath her. Everybody looked so funny upside down that she started giggling and fell into what would have been a messy collapse if Spike hadn’t grabbed her arm, tossed her out horizontally, and cracked her like a whip. Then she was suddenly back, on her feet, decorously held…and goddam waltzing in defiance of the music.  
  
Spike had his eyes shut and looked as happy as she’d ever seen him. And Buffy could tell that their impromptu gymnastics had been noticed--the kids around had stopped to watch, grinning broadly, some even applauding soundlessly. Some of them were vamps. And it occurred to Buffy that absolutely nothing bad was happening. Sure, she might lose her job over this, but that would be some other time and this was now. The vamps were pairing off with human partners or each other, executing steps a little more light-footed and sure than the rest but otherwise distinguishable only by wearing the colors. Not one single kid with a throat torn out. Nobody terrorized or screaming. Nobody even yellow-eyed. Because the vamps adhered to the limits Spike had set for them; because they knew the punishment would be sure, severe, and quite likely end in dust if they crossed those limits. With feeding prohibited, the picked crew were having a good time like everybody else in the hypercharged fog of sweat and the smell, music and motion.  
  
This enchanted harmony within set limits, established and brutally enforced, was Spike’s doing. His new order. Not to be trusted beyond the limits, but perfect within them on the shared middle ground of the gym.  
  
Freeing a hand, she reached up to cup his ear, and he bent to hear her: “I get it, Spike! I get it, what you’re doing!” When he drew back and blinked, she nodded emphatically, grinning so hard her face hurt. It was so great to finally understand. A connection.  
  
He swooped in for a kiss. When she started to sag against him, he held her steady, his head bowed, and raised his right arm straight up, calling, “Here!”  
  
Somehow, they’d learned that signal. The vamps could probably hear him anyway. With a spread hand descending, he sent them to silence the radios, and as the music diminished and died, everybody gathered around, leaving happy, respectful room for Spike and Buffy in the center.  
  
Looking around, collecting their attention, Spike said ruefully, “Well, we’re for it now. Not exactly the sort of exercise we were s’posed to be doing. Liable to get in Dutch for it, too. Wasn’t the, the instructor’s idea here: you remember that if anybody asks. Just sort of happened. Anyway, though this could roll on fine till midnight, the hour’s up and more, and next time, we stick to business here, all right? And you lot, scatter yourselves around and make certain not a single bit of trash is left anyplace. You lot with the radios, go stand by yours so I know they’re all accounted for and claimed by who brought them. That’s a good idea, music to move to--but not so many. We’ll see to that, next time. No more radios, right?” As the crowd broke into swirling motion, policing the floor and collecting belongings, Spike called, “My lot, help ‘em locate their own footgear, and no good stealing somebody else’s for a lark. And be certain you get your jackets and what-all, too: whatever you brought with you. Can’t leave this place looking like what’s left after the best party I been to for awhile. Long while. Now go on. Not gonna try to get names of the newcomers, that’s next time, supposing they come back for what this class is really about. Not this ridiculous dancing around nonsense. And thank the, Miss Elizabeth here, for not shutting us all down when she first came in, like the good sport that she is.”  
  
There was a scatter of backward-shouted, “Thanks!” and somebody tried to get “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow” started but it petered out as the gym cleared. Directed by a flipped thumb, the vamps waiting by the door went out too.  
  
“I’ll get the lights,” Spike said, starting toward the bleachers and the inner wall. Over his shoulder, he added, “See you brought the rest of the smell. Didn’t tell ‘em: enough around already to choke an elephant. Have to talk to Red about that. The fug’s chewable, in quantity, an' stinks of magic something fierce. There were a couple times I thought this was gonna turn into something absolutely else. Didn’t, though--not that I know of, anyways. Save the case for next time, I guess. I’ll take it back to your office for you. Afterward.”  
  
Bounding up a few rows, he killed all the lights. A rattle, shortly after, marked his checking that the inner doors were secure. Buffy stood in the darkness tracking him by sound as he came back to her across the floor and wasn’t surprised when he grabbed hard and started trying to suck all her vitality out through her swollen lips.  
  
“Now,” he growled in her ear.  
  
Following, moving with his motion, everything reduced to smell and touch and taste, Buffy wondered that he’d thought a word was needed. When the time was right, you just knew. And everything followed from that, as it always had.  
  
**********  
  
He’d taken adequate thought. Fed himself up as much as he could take, even to getting a bit into the fledges’ ration. Had all the floor mats laid out in the corner under the bleachers, with some pillows, and a snuggy quilt: for under, so there’d be something between her and the mats’ plastic when he was nailing her into it; and for over, so she wouldn’t get cold in the between times. Nearly a hundred square feet of improvised bed: should do, no matter what they got up to.  
  
With no mats set out for falling onto, the class had turned warm-up exercises into dancing. And it’d all gone on from there.  
  
Taking thought had meant he’d been wholly distracted all day. Yearning toward it. Dreaming of it. Locked in arousal he didn’t want to waste on anything but its proper object. And then walking into the compelling haze of the smell, that fuzzed the edges and made everybody seem desirable and available to him. Could have shagged half the room and been working on the other half before Buffy arrived, so warm and so herself that no one else was the least appealing and he’d pulled out of a spontaneous group grope to get to her.  
  
Good thing she hadn’t been ten minutes later. What she’d have walked in on wouldn’t have been anything like so harmless and innocent.  
  
Have to have a talk with Red about the effect of the pheromone-heavy smell in volume, in an enclosed space, particularly on smell-sensitive vamps. Tone the next batch down considerable or there’d be consequences. Might already have been some, though he’d given his crew a good talking-to before his mind veered off and rejected anything that wasn’t sensation and readiness and need, all focused on her like a spotlight.  
  
Taking thought beforehand meant that now he didn’t have to think at all. Could just turn loose and _do_.  
  
They did. Frantic after weeks of abstinence, they exploded into one another. Couldn’t even make it as far as the prepared nest for the first few times. Couldn’t separate long enough to fully shed even the minimum clothing--haul it away, rip it, push it aside, and lost again. The taste of her, under her breasts, and her smell of wanting, sent him into immediate spasm. He came in his jeans, constricted, not even inside her. Unrecovered, still caught in that first release, he was back at her, wanting to taste every inch of her skin. Game face emerging and fading unnoticed, flexing within himself as everything inside was welcomed into the warmth. Seized, handled, scratched, bitten, wrestling and rolling, strength matched to need and his joy that she rose to him as would a great wave, capable of hurling him into rocks but instead engulfing and tumbling him, powerful and playful. Everywhere. Nothing he knew that wasn’t her. Again going for the tickling, that sent him into helpless spasms and another blowout stronger than the first and collapse after, passive while she yanked his boots off and able to be of little help with removing the sticky jeans.  
  
“Sorry to put all the work on you, love. Think my spine’s melted,” he said blurrily. Her face came down and her hot mouth silenced him. Or at least dismissed anything but hard-drawn breath and babbling.  
  
Eventually, on hands and knees, he led her to discover the nest, the quilt and the pillows, and swarmed all over her there, and it was so stupid ever to talk of “taking” a woman. It was giving, all giving, tuned to her now in a conversation of touches, finding where and how she most wanted him and giving her that, still incapable of delay but able to surprise her with fingers and mouth and tongue, startling sudden noises from her and pleased with his own inventiveness as she came to climax and convulsed, screaming.  
  
Gentling her down afterward, holding her through the aftershocks, nuzzling at the mark that summoned and assured him that all was permitted. No hurt, no harm, except what she wanted, except what came of itself in the varying torques of their coming together. Didn’t need to hurt her. Nor not afraid of it, neither. All good, the bruised and aching places. Let him know it wasn’t a dream.  
  
She slept a little then, and he continued to hold her, reaching behind and tenting the quilt around to hold her warmth, a little sad that he had none of that to give her when it meant so much to him. Softly petting until she stirred, all wonderfully slippery with sweat and smelling strongly of them both, cheek and sweated hair against his chest, stroking along his ribs, licking and nibbling at his nipples. Then she _bit_ , and the galvanic shock went straight to his cock. Hard again and aching that good ache but patient with it now, keeping things on the simmer, not desperate to be finished. Time for less demanding kisses, investigating the precious inner fold of her elbow and behind her knee. Attending to her poor punished feet, the ridiculous shoes she inflicted on herself, brainwashed fashion victim to accept such self-imposed torture when the turn of a slim ankle, the imagined flare of a calf, was the quintessence of feminine allure in his day, not foot-binding as though modern girls were the inheritors of the heathen Chinese so that the toes withered and dropped off, nothing left but the stub of a foot, and on like that, meanwhile kneading and working the muscles, taking each toe into his mouth for separate attention while she defended her idiot choice of footwear on the grounds of practicality, like a stiletto heel was any help in staking a vamp or pivoting with a broadsword. Completely ridiculous. Happily bickering and all the rest simmering steadily underneath.  
  
Her silver anklet was still in place. Tasted fine. She jerked her foot away, complaining that it tickled, and a fine one she was to talk.  
  
Then she started telling him about Mike coming over and he fizzed as quietly as he could, hearing what she’d said, knowing what Mike would have made of it; touched that she’d even tried, sweet silly cow. Sounded like Mike had minded his manners, anyway, which was good enough and all he expected. But her talking love and Mike surely hearing dominance was just so impossibly funny he couldn’t keep it altogether inside so she pounced him, all indignant, and then opted for her turn on top, controlling the pace, and that was fine too, whatever she pleased. Bossy little minx when the mood took her, and he happy to have it so, changing leads never a problem for him. Had quite enough of being in charge in the ordinary way, glad to lie back and be ridden, letting it all build how it would, deeply sheathed, and the view glorious too, looking up at her: all ribboned and auraed with radiant heat, all the more beautiful for being self-forgetful in her blindness, all inward focused and intent, hair elflocked and wayward, hiding and then revealing her face as she moved on him.  
  
Might not have been bad with the shackles, much like this and skip all the sad waiting but she wouldn’t even try, and that set him off somehow.  
  
He flipped and held her and bore down hard, fast, impatient. Forcing sweet noises from her and making considerable noise himself like they weren’t supposed to at her place on account of Bit, needing her rest and all, not to mention Red, but no reason now not to cut loose and just fly. The mark called him out of himself and he bit down hard, everything clenched and exploding and completely gone into the sensation and the taste of her, smell and taste fused and overwhelming. Taking in the power while giving it back, no will left in the matter whatever. Part of an arc. Whited-out blank.  
  
The voice inside him saying, _It could be like that all the time. Lost in an ecstasy of completion._  
  
He thought he said to it, “Bugger off. This is mine. I shut you out.”  
  
 _Can’t do that, dear boy. Not once you’ve let me in. Besides, if I were out, I couldn’t do this to you._  
  
A wave of pure bodily pleasure washed over him, devoid of context or significance. It lasted however long it lasted and was gone when it was gone. Sense seeped slowly back.  
  
Dazed and lethargic, he thought he said, “Buffy’s better. We’re better. It all _means_. That, that’s just some trick.”  
  
 _An appealing trick, nevertheless, isn’t it? Direct stimulation of the pleasure centers. Overloads the receptors with bliss. It’s impossible to feel better than that. Quantity and availability beat occasional, inconsistent quality every time. Over time. You’ll like my service. I absolutely guarantee it._  
  
“Fuck off. Wanking myself unconscious for eternity isn’t how I figured to spend my unlife.”  
  
 _Then, you hadn’t experienced it. Like the chip’s opposite: pleasure instead of pain. Unending. Your demon understands._  
  
“And the button in your hand. Think not. If it’s so great, you do it. Be rid of you then. Fold all small and disappear up your own arse, why don’t you.”  
  
 _Deliciously contrary. But your demon understands._ Smug.  
  
“I control my demon!”  
  
Then followed an interval of vague drifting in which his exchange with the voice faded into a general unease and was forgotten except for the sated contentment of his demon, which was no very strange thing, after all. He became aware of lying stretched out with his head on the best pillow imaginable, Buffy’s belly, and her weeping onto him the way she did sometimes. Meant nothing bad, only letting all the stored-up sorrow out, which she mostly didn’t allow herself except at such times. Just how she was, how she did. He didn’t take it personally.  
  
**********  
  
Mike was on the hunt.  
  
This player, this fucking sorcerer, Ethan Rayne, had made beaucoup enemies in Sunnydale, his last few swings though. So there were those that remembered. A bit of spite here, a grudge there. Somebody he'd pissed off with a non-delivery or a casual double-cross who wouldn't mind a piece of his hide if it didn't risk or cost them anything. Not many vamps, though--vamps didn't much like magic or those who played around with it. As Spike would have put it, too poncy, too sneaky, for blunt vamp smash-and-slash tastes. Much as Mike heard poisoners were regarded by the more directly murderous elite in prisons. So vamps didn't tend to have much contact with magic workers, not even enough to dislike them on a personal basis. Except, of course, Digger. However, Mike put off visiting with Digger, saving that for a last resort, instead proceeding roundabout.  
  
First he built a network of connections who knew something of Rayne’s prior escapades, information mainly sourced initially from Willow, who’d have a natural interest in such things. With sufficient reason, Mike had gotten his mind around what Spike had finally accepted: that you didn’t need to be abroad in daylight to talk to somebody. Spike had given him a cell phone. Mike used it, sitting tense and intent in his own lair, an abandoned house at the edge of Tryed Stone Cemetery, that he shared with his crew of three fighters and five minions.  
  
Talking on the phone was strange and uncomfortable--no smell or body language to go by, only the words--but it had advantages, too. There was no rank to be considered. No fight could break out over the phone. Those he talked to weren’t reacting to this big hulking guy with a fairly stupid, placid expression. Nor to a vamp that might take a notion to yank them apart if he didn’t like what he heard, since all vamps had a rep as crazy-volatile among the rest of the demon population. He was just a voice to them, as they were to him, and he found things were simpler that way. Much clearer, more understandable.  
  
To Willow, all he had to do was identify himself as “Spike’s Mike” and she opened right up and told him in plain words what he knew to ask and even suggested promising lines of follow-up he hadn’t then thought of. Helpful, direct. He decided he more liked Willow than not. Apart from the magic, of course.  
  
More demons than he would have thought had phones. Most weren’t listed in any book, but there was a network of demons who needed or wanted to contact others, and the connections spun out from there. Within a couple hours of starting, Mike had 127 numbers jotted down, together with their associated names and designations: he found that there were quite a lot of demons in the repair and delivery businesses, servicing those parts of Sunnydale humans avoided after dark. Nearly all the cabbies were demons of the less conspicuous breeds. Utility workers, too. It made sense, though he’d never had any reason to think about it before.  
  
And into the notebook went what they knew about Rayne: where they’d seen him, what he’d been up to, why they disliked the bastard. Mike didn’t come up with a single individual who’d had any contact with the Chaos Mage who seemed to have the least respect or liking for him. Practically fell all over themselves to spew some story of how he’d done them down. Stupid, Mike decided, to piss so many off so casually, with such indifference. Given the chance, they’d turn on you, do you whatever small harm they could. Even mice could do you down, given enough of them; or distract and occupy your attention while somebody else came at you from a direction you hadn’t expected.  
  
Rayne was a bit like Spike that way, he thought then, except that Spike knew and accepted that there’d be consequences of pissing people off on a wholesale basis and faced up to them and then beat them down, toe to toe, whenever they confronted him. So maybe not just stupid. More arrogant. And Mike had nothing against arrogance when it was earned. Like a Master vamp insisting on due respect and beating down any who refused it. Just the natural order of things.  
  
In the first of the early twilight, he rolled over to the Magic Box to talk to the vengeance demon, Anya, that owned the place. In the lull between the end of the work day and the start of nighttime activity, the shop was empty and Anya, a nice looking woman, seemed not at all unwilling to talk to him--even flirted with him a little, which was always pleasant, though not at all serious, as best he could judge.  
  
Leaning on the counter where the cash register was, Mike said, “Trying to get a line on this Ethan Rayne. Figure he has to buy stuff, to do what he does. And where else would he come but here?”  
  
“Naturally,” Anya agreed with a brisk head bob. “I have the best selection and quality of materials to be found within a hundred mile radius.”  
  
“You know him by sight?”  
  
“I do now,” Anya replied with an extremely toothy grin, chin resting on an upright prop of fists. “I’d be a pitiful judge of customers if I couldn’t tell a true Adept from a novice at twenty paces: Adepts won’t tolerate more than a 30% markup, whereas novices can be overcharged wildly and are too ignorant to know the difference. Adepts smell of their profession. Like dentists and garbage collectors.”  
  
“Expect they would. If he comes in again, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know.” Mike pulled from a shirt pocket a yellow sticky with his cell phone number and passed it over. “Or just call sometime to chat, if you take the notion. Though I don’t expect a lady like yourself has much spare time, what with running this place. Expect you’re pretty busy, socially, too.”  
  
“Well, I’m very involved with civic groups, the Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown Merchants’ Association, that’s true, and it does take up much of my time. With the extended evening hours, I seldom get home before midnight these days. Evening business has really picked up, the past few weeks. I’ve seen you patrolling.” By Anya’s expression, she’d liked what she’d seen, too.  
  
Mike returned her smile pleasantly. “Spike, he calls them sweeps. To tell that from what he does with the Slayer. But yeah, I help out how I can. However he wants. Sort of his second these days, though I have a territory of my own. Always back and forth between there and the factory…. Kind of occupied past midnight on that account, though we’ll be going to two shifts soon--to midnight, and then to dawn. Sunrise…. Don’t yet have the hands to run that yet, though.”  
  
“It’s been noticed. Much more repeat business, steady customers that don’t inexplicably disappear. In general, historically, vamps have been considered bad for business. That’s changing. The colors are noticed, even by merchants who don’t have the least idea what they stand for.” Anya tugged with two fingers at the sleeve of his black T-shirt, one he’d found with the slogan _Farm Fresh Tilapia--Fewer Bones!_ and the logo of the Farmed Fish Association, a twisty looking fish caught in mid-jump. She smiled up into his face and gave his arm a pat.  
  
No question: flirting.  
  
She went on, “The Downtown Merchants’ Association is behind this initiative 200%, and you can tell Spike I said so. Or is ‘initiative’ a bad word for you? I know Spike gets an odd look in his eyes when I forget and use it, and no wonder, given his experiences.”  
  
“No, don’t mean nothing to me.”  
  
“Good. Anyway, we’re solid.” Anya shook her clasped hands in what Mike supposed was a sort of cheering-on gesture. Turning pensive, she continued, “I’ve been considering taking on extra staff for the evening. These ten-hour days aren’t healthy for a girl my age. I’m sure I look a positive fright--bags under the eyes, incipient wrinkles.” She offered her wide-eyed face for his inspection.  
  
“Expect you’re tired, but it doesn’t show. Don’t see any wrinkles, not a one.”  
  
“I said ‘incipient,’” she said crossly, rubbing at the space between her eyebrows. “So there _are_ bags, then.”  
  
“No bags, neither. Look like a magazine cover.”  
  
“Really? Which one?”  
  
Mike cast his eyes to the ceiling, visualizing magazine racks at the supermarket nearest his lair. “ _Modern Bride,_ maybe. Or _Diet Surgery_ , that had that series about Melanie Griffith awhile back.”  
  
She nodded emphatically. “So sad, when the before pictures look better than the after! A girl has to be extra careful when she’s only intermittently immortal. And the schedule is positively killing. So…before I actually advertise for help, might you be interested? Good-looking retail personnel make the customers so much more likely to think well of an establishment, and therefore much more likely to return. Repeat business: that’s the secret of successful retail.” Anya nodded solemnly, disclosing this sentiment--surely one worthy of a T-shirt, in Mike’s estimation.  
  
“Couldn’t say. Have to ask Spike about it. Maybe. I’ll give it some thought. Now back to this Rayne. Anything he bought, that he had delivered? Maybe an address?”  
  
“I think there was one phone order, now that you mention it: let me look.” She dug under the counter and brought out a ledger-style book. She banged it open on the countertop and started flipping pages, scanning with an intent frown. “There it is: 1601 Oak, second floor,” she declared triumphantly.  
  
Mike got out a pocket pad and borrowed her pen to write down the address. Then he asked soberly, “We gonna be on the outs if I tear the head off a steady customer?”  
  
“Well, that would really depend on why. Though in my profession, it’s not good to be overly inquisitive about final intent, motivation, that sort of thing. So I’m not meaning to pry, or--”  
  
“He’s doing something to Spike. Something that’s….” Mike stopped himself at the last second, before admitting whatever it was had Spike scared--strong enough to smell. “I don’t like it and mean to stop it.”  
  
“Is Lady Gates of no help? I know her attitude toward Spike is somewhat ambiguous, or should that be ambivalent? Anyway, she certainly might be expected to intervene, since she considers Spike her property.”  
  
“Don’t know what she’s after,” Mike responded, scowling. “Except for setting Dawn aside, that is. Hasn’t been helpful so far, that I can see.”  
  
“Then by all means, stop the bastard,” Anya said, nodding several times. “But do be careful: mages aren’t easily approached and tend to have very nasty things up their sleeves by way of defense. Or they wouldn’t live as long as they do. Has Spike authorized you to act on his behalf?”  
  
“On some things. Not about this, though,” Mike admitted unwillingly. “On the other hand, this Rayne won’t look to see me coming.” He quoted, “‘Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.’”  
  
“Exactly right! And he certainly won’t hear it from me!” Anya placed fingers over her mouth, then made as if turning a key in a lock over her full and red-painted lips. “Everybody knows I’m the soul of discretion!”  
  
A narrow look found no conscious irony. So maybe her eager rattling on about Rayne was only part of the general dislike of the man, or maybe it meant she considered them on confidential terms on account of the connection to Spike. Likely the latter, he decided.  
  
“I’m serious,” Anya said, clasping hands around his wrist and looking into his eyes earnestly. “I’ve never known a vamp who wasn’t far too reckless, charging in without a plan of attack, much less preparing a defense. Spike’s notorious for that. I’ve had to bail him out of several situations over the years. If Spike hesitates to go after Rayne himself, there’s good reason, and you should give it a lot of serious thought before involving yourself.”  
  
“Don’t worry on my account: I’m protected.”  
  
“One of Willow’s lockets?”  
  
“No, a watch. But same sort of thing, I expect. Spike gave it to me,” Mike informed her proudly.  
  
“Willow’s a good ally and a powerful defense, even if she’s often unreasonable about what constitutes a trade discount. But don’t trust that talisman blindly, not against a mage with a taste for influencing vampires. If he can hurt Spike, he can hurt you.”  
  
“That’s so,” Mike admitted. He hadn’t thought about that side of it. His respect for Anya’s shrewdness, already high, went up a notch. “Thanks for the warning. And I’ll take what care I can.”  
  
“Be sure you do. I imagine you’re told all the time that you have the most lovely eyelashes. But the first time I remember seeing you, you had both arms broken, two black eyes swollen shut, and a concussion: you looked as though you’d been through a meat grinder. And that was just Spike! It would be a shame to get yourself turned into something hideous or trivial, like a newt or a Mayfly. After all, who pays any attention to a Mayfly? And they live such short, unimportant lives, too--the epitome of mortality. That’s if he doesn’t dust you outright, of course. Less hideous, but far more final.”  
  
“I’ll take care,” Mike assured her, and thanked her for her help.  
  
Took less than five minutes to get to that address on Oak. No surprise, the second floor apartment was empty, and maybe it’d been no more than a convenience address, where something could be dropped off and then collected later. But Mike thought not. Having forced a window, he stood in the space the drab living room furniture left open, shut his eyes, and pulled what information he could from the atmosphere. Definite stink and prickle of residual magic, though old and faded to nearly nothing. Magic of a dry sort, not the more active fiery kinds. Passive, like a bear trap, set and waiting for you to walk in, not the sort that would chase you down the street or erupt into your dreams, though he wasn’t so discriminating a judge of that as Spike was.  
  
And stronger than the scent of magic was a mix of lingering personal scents: this apartment had been occupied by many over the years, and their smells lingered. Took him awhile to separate the older from the newer and memorize the distinguishing characteristics of the one associated with the magic, indefinably tied to it by smell.  
  
He went in search of that smell. The apartment had been stripped pretty thoroughly but not repainted. He found a hand print on a door. Couldn’t see it, but he could smell it just fine. That helped him refine his original guess at Rayne’s own smell, as distinguished from all the other smell-ghosts that inhabited this place. He thought of taking the door, but it would be hard to maneuver on the bike, so he kept looking and found a crumpled tissue lodged unnoticed behind a bureau. Smell was distinct on it: it would do. Holding it carefully by the least corner with a two-finger grip, he ducked back out through the window and inserted the tissue in one of the set of panniers he’d gotten for his bike, to avoid mixing the scent with his own any more than he could help. A zip-shut bag would be good, but he hadn’t thought of that in time. He could pick one up on the way back to the factory.  
  
When he’d set tonight’s sweep on that scent, if Rayne moved around anywhere in Sunnydale in the open air tonight, they’d have a lock on him they could follow to his destination and likely his lair. A good beginning. Mike wouldn’t have to go to Digger about it after all--not yet, anyway. Didn’t want to show his hand to Digger if he could avoid it, because Digger was almost certainly involved, since the target was Spike. And Mike didn’t trust himself to keep his mouth shut. Hadn’t seen much of Digger lately, except at some distance, at Willy’s. Not since Spike had let Mike feed from him. Digger would have noticed and expect to be told why, and Mike wasn’t at all eager to have that conversation. So best to put it off as long as possible.  
  
Then he headed off to the factory by way of the mall. Picked up a box of zip-shut bags at the drugstore there, then wandered around moodily looking into shop windows, waiting for inspiration to strike. Dawn’s birthday party was tomorrow, and he was going, so human customs dictated a present. Likely why the Slayer had invited him and Spike had said yeah, go: raise the tally of presents.  
  
But nothing looked good to him. Nothing spoke to his senses and said _Dawn_ to him. Been so long since he’d kept company with her or tasted her, he reflected sadly. Caught her scent a few times, but angry words and a cold stare had gone with that, so he couldn’t really be happy at the memory.  
  
She wasn’t really there, and maybe she wouldn’t like what he got her anyway because it’d been from him, so it likely didn’t matter what he got her. So just get something simple, any old thing, and get it gift-wrapped, and a card to go with. Be done with it.  
  
Deciding, he grimly headed for the department store.


	11. Slipping the Tether

Spike lost most of Thursday. He wasn’t sure how. Felt so good, he didn’t particularly care, but it puzzled him whenever he roused from his walking dream, checked his watch, and found another two or three hours had gone someplace. Maybe south--south sounded good to him. Warm there. Good place for the untethered hours to go. Then the fog would roll back and blank out the puzzlement.  
  
Once, the fog lifted and he found himself fighting all-out against a trio of Tethys demons: many-limbed, with tough black shiny chitin, spurs at the joints, had to go for the eyes on those, then get a blade in under the skull plate and separate it from the thorax; looking around the big indigo-dark temple space for something with a cutting edge….  
  
Another time, his opponent was an ugly stinking troll in furs and leathers and odd scraps of cloth, and he was keeping clear of the huge hammer, indifferently in and out of dappled sunlight on a hillside, the sun chartreuse and empty of harm, and almost got himself mashed flat trying to puzzle that one out, wondering what’d become of the Tethys or had he done for them? Weapon, came the insistent thought: had to find a weapon, don’t worry about the Tethys, dealing with the troll now, and that was no problem, not really: just get uphill of him, dodge the hammer swing, and go right at him, hard and fast, maybe knock him off balance and rolling. Anyway, tear his throat out. Try not to get hit in the long while it would take the troll to collapse. Had all the weapon he needed, he was a fucking vampire!  
  
The minute he thought that and started to act on it, the hillside and the strange sun were gone and the next he knew, he was perambulating along the sewers. Marks at the junctions told him where he was, and a glance at his watch told him it was already past the time the Slayer was due for her workout.  
  
Some way, he’d blown off the whole day’s agenda, yet couldn’t bring himself to care. Actually, he felt most inclined to get extremely drunk and blow the rest of it. The agenda--even the thought of the agenda--bored him stiff. And the thought of a long session with the translation was even worse. Sit and stare at a screen for hours? What had possessed him to agree to that? Very no fun whatever. Fighting Tethys, now that was more like it. He wondered how that had all come out and how he’d missed the finish.  
  
Take on Digger, maybe: Digger would have enough fighters by now to put up a good scrap. There’d been a reason he hadn’t taken Digger on directly before now but he couldn’t bring it to mind.  
  
He felt strange, stoned, and that puzzled him because that was Mike’s preferred impairment, not his. So maybe starting an all-out battle should be put off awhile. Stoned, his judgment wasn’t worth shit. Besides, the thought of fighting in Digger’s labyrinthine lair didn’t feel like fun, once he started considering it. Felt like an appealing trap. Put him off the idea somehow. Hell with it all. Just go up to Willy’s, take on the house. Drink himself paralytic afterward. But get someplace safe first, considering the blood price Digger had set on him.  
  
He couldn’t think of any fun that didn’t drag waves of complications rolling in behind. Nothing simple and direct, the way he wanted.  
  
Had to be hallucinating again: the Tethys’ cathedral, the troll and the hillside in the wrong colored light. Might better sideline himself and wait for the sense to come back.  
  
Wished he could talk to Joyce, but he recalled she was gone, likely to where he’d never be, so fuck it. Likewise Dawn, whom he missed acutely: wanted her real bad to sort this for him, tell and confirm for him what was real, but that was a shut door too, couldn’t go there. Not Buffy, though: had to keep all the nonsense clear of her or like as not, she’d figure he’d slipped a cog and gone all crazy again, want to chain him up in the basement except the shackles were gone, no way to lock him down until the sense came back. Shackles, they’d been comforting in a way: locked down, he’d known he couldn’t hurt anybody who mattered. Didn’t have that worry on his mind. But she’d taken against them somehow so they were gone and he’d have to manage this all by himself.  
  
Had to stay well clear of the Slayer. No help to be had there.  
  
Seemed like every way he turned, he ran up against a blind wall. Rat in a maze, subtly herded along a path by finding everything else closed off and no way to get above it, figure how to go. Too stoned and fogged to see it plain, yet too driven by restlessness to stop where he was.  
  
When he started battering the walls with his fists, the soothing fog slid back in, feeding him reassurance that none of it mattered and there was no need to hurt himself over it even though the hurt had felt good--like the beginnings of clarity. Feeding him pleasure, right now, that was an escape from choice. Didn't have to care about none of it, only drift and let the fog take him. Let himself be pushed wherever it was he was needed to go. Fog didn't want him tormented or uncertain. Liked him fine the way he was and would presently deliver him to more fighting and all things that satisfied his nature.  
  
Couldn’t very well argue with that.  
  
**********  
  
It wasn’t the end of the world, Buffy thought, without a hand free to rub at her eyes because she was carrying a carton containing her pencil pot, half a dozen computer diskettes, a notebook, a few pens, and the six remaining squeeze bottles of smell down the school’s front stairs toward the SUV in the parking lot.  
  
She’d only lost her job, and what was that? A part-time nothing, a make-work service usually performed unpaid by the head of the P.T.A., that she didn’t even belong to. It was really stupid to feel like the world’s utter failure, except that she did. So she was a stupid failure. Not to mention guilt: one Charissa Richardson, whose name wasn’t even on the roster, claimed she’d gone into the gym a virgin, on Tuesday, and left otherwise. The family doctor had confirmed her non-virgin status. A complaint of inadequate supervision had been lodged by the parents.  
  
Not rape, Principal Doty had assured her. Youthful high spirits, poor judgment on everyone’s part. No one claimed otherwise. But better all around if appropriate action was seen to be taken and the person technically responsible for supervising that after school activity was sent away, presumably to the more structured environment of the business world. That might fend off a lawsuit, which the school really couldn’t afford under present circumstances. However, he was quite willing to provide a reference, should one be needed, since her job performance had been quite satisfactory except for this one regrettable lapse in judgment.  
  
So the bottom line was that she was out, and so was her rowdy exercise/self-defense class.  
  
She tossed the carton on the middle bench seat and slid the door shut. Then she turned against the vehicle, her face hidden in her bent arm, and bawled.  
  
She’d been rejected. Was unwanted and disapproved of. Had Done Something Wrong. It was devastating. She couldn’t think through the ramifications. If she’d been told that losing her job meant that in two hours, marshals would arrive to seal and seize Casa Summers and dump them and their belongings out on the street, and that she’d have to go back to the horrible Double-Meat Palace and beg the manager for her old job back, she would have gulped, nodded numbly, and believed it.  
  
Willow knew about catastrophes like this: once she’d gotten a B on an algebra exam and been inconsolable for weeks. But Buffy’s try to reach Willow by phone went unanswered. In class, perhaps: Buffy never could keep Will’s daytime schedule straight.  
  
She next tried Spike, and that was even more frustrating, because you often had to wait through twenty or more rings before he’d pick up. This time, not even thirty brought a response.  
  
Oh, why were the people you depended on never available when you really needed them?  
  
Flinging the unresponsive phone onto the passenger side, Buffy turned on the ignition, shoved the gear shift, moved about five feet, then jammed the shift into Park while slamming on the brakes. Had to dive into her tote for tissues for an eye wipe and a nose-blow, in that order. Being an organized person, she had a small trash bag on the floor to dispose of the tissue wad. She took her foot off the brake while shoving the shift lever, and the SUV lurched forward.  
  
The phone buzzed.  
  
Everything jammed to a halt again. Buffy was too weepy and distressed to look for the caller ID: she just shoved the phone to her ear.  
  
Anya’s voice blared, “Buffy, you have to get over here this instant, right away! Something terrible has happened!”  
  
“What?” Buffy shrieked back, filled with horrible imaginings.  
  
“The Chaos Stone has been stolen!”  
  
“The _what?_ ”  
  
“--and it’s all Willow’s fault. My life may be in danger! You have to come here right now and protect me and get it back!”  
  
With no clear idea of what Anya was so wound up about, Buffy shoved the SUV back into gear and drove out of the school parking lot, scowling with Slayer determination, bumping heavily over the curb.  
  
**********  
  
Buffy had a vague recollection of the Chaos Stone: Angel had dug it up someplace, and it’d been used as a diversion during the closing of the Hellmouth, drawing away most of the Turok-han, clearing the way for her, Spike, and the SITs to get into the Hellmouth with nobody left to fight but the Bringers.  
  
“But that’s not the point,” Anya declared, wringing her hands and pacing in front of a display of desiccated Hands of Glory. “It’s worth money. _Lots_ of money!”  
  
Buffy sat down at the big table. She wasn’t exactly glad of the distraction, but she was prepared to listen and try to understand what this had to do with her. “Remind me how you ended up with it.”  
  
“Angel wanted it back, but Spike tossed it to me, and we both ran,” Anya explained, chin lifted righteously high. “I have it, so I own it. Or I _had_ it…. And I had a _buyer!_ ” she wailed. “And now it’s gone!”  
  
“What is the thingy, precisely?”  
  
“The dial of a fixed dimensional portal that doesn’t exist anymore. So it doesn’t connect with anything. But it could be made to. Now, it’s just randomness, the keyhole of a door into noplace, everyplace. Energy blowing through like wind. It has an energy signature that demons are attracted to--particularly vamps. Metaphysical harmonics, or some such thing. Personally, I found it annoying, which was another reason I parked it elsewhere while I was shopping for a buyer. It set my teeth on edge.”  
  
Looking around the shop, noticing the modifications made to the annex to repurpose the training room as retail space and pulling a slight frown on that account, though it was no surprise, Buffy asked, “It wasn’t here?”  
  
“No, that’s what I’ve been telling you!” Anya flopped down in an adjoining chair, flinging her hands in agitation. “It’s best to be discreet about such things. You’d scarcely believe how unscrupulous some dealers in magical antiquities can be. So I certainly didn’t want it here: not nearly secure enough.” With hands clenched in effort, Anya forced herself to spit it out: “I engaged Olaf to look after it for me.”  
  
“Your ex?” Buffy asked incredulously.  
  
“He’s perfectly reliable. Well, stupid. And it was no imposition--all he had to do was keep it for me. And I paid him! Or would have, when it was time to collect it. And in that dimension, its shrieking was barely noticeable. No one should have been able to find it. Except Willow. I told Willow where it was. I was naïve and trusting, and now she’s betrayed me!”  
  
“Slow down, Anya. How do you know it’s gone?”  
  
Anya made a vexed face. “Well, I looked, of course! I generally pop over once a week, just to see how Olaf is getting on. A few drinks, a few laughs. It’s sociable! And it’s only a small interdimensional jump. Why shouldn’t I?”  
  
“What does Olaf have to say about it?”  
  
“Nothing. No Olaf, no stone. I came right back and phoned you.”  
  
“Ahuh.” Buffy tucked away for further examination the possibility that Anya’s pop-in visits had been enough to alert even Olaf, who had an IQ well south of his blood pressure, that what was in his custody was valuable. “How valuable?”  
  
“The current price is $ 100,000. And it was _met_ , Buffy! I had a _buyer!_ ”  
  
Buffy fanned herself. “That’s a big-ticket item, all right. But Anya--I don’t yet see how any of this has to do with me.”  
  
“Well, there’s Willow: I admit she probably didn’t steal it herself, but she undoubtedly blabbed to somebody. And she’s _your_ friend! And then there’s this Chaos Mage who wants to reopen the Hellmouth. I’d think that would concern you somewhat. And then--”  
  
“Whoa! Whoa! Where did this come from?”  
  
“Mike told me. Yes!” Struck by a thought, Anya dashed back to the main counter, got a yellow sticky out of the register, and dialed the phone, leaning on an elbow. After a long wait, she said, “It’s Anya. Yes, I realize you were probably asleep, but this is an emergency. Please come down now. Right away.” She listened, then said, “Yes, I’m quite aware that the sun is shining. There’s tunnel access in the alley, I’m sure-- Fine, that will be fine, I really appreciate--” Replacing the receiver, Anya remarked, “Vamps certainly can be cranky when you wake them up. I thought of Spike first, but I couldn’t reach him and besides, he’d want a finder’s fee. Mike will do just as well. Better.”  
  
Buffy deduced that Mike wouldn’t require being paid.  
  
While waiting for Anya to finish her call, Buffy had been wandering among the tables and displays, avoiding the Hands of Glory, for which she'd developed a fixed dislike. On the table nearest the shop door, half a dozen or so tiny one-ounce bottles were set out. Curly lettering identified them as "Sunnydale Seduction." On a nasty guess, Buffy opened one: sure enough, Willow's magicked smell. Repackaged.  
  
"You're _selling_ it?" Buffy demanded indignantly. "For" (she checked the sticker) "ten dollars an ounce?"  
  
"Just because you have no retail sense doesn't mean nobody has," Anya retorted airily. "I was going to tell you, the next time we had a meeting. We haven't had one lately. So. You'll get your share. Or Spike Enterprises will. It's a sensible business arrangement. I don't know what you're so upset about."  
  
"Did you _ask_ anybody? Did you _tell_ anybody?"  
  
"Really, I can't see that it's important now, with everything else that's going on. Please wipe the bottle before you put it back: I can't sell it with your finger marks all over it."  
  
Grumpily, Buffy swiped the tiny bottle on her sleeve, then thumped it down. It galled her that Anya was making money from what they were giving away for free. But she should have known better. For a moment, she considered requiring a finder's fee, that even Spike wasn't dim enough to pass by, according to Anya. But no. Regretfully, she decided that would be Wrong.  
  
If this theft was part of the attempt to reopen the Hellmouth, it was her duty as the Slayer to prevent that from happening. The Council had made it abundantly clear that Slayers were not to be paid for doing their duty. Despite Spike’s often expressed contempt for that view, Buffy reluctantly accepted it even now, when she imagined her modest bank balance vanishing under a deluge of bills for lack of a paycheck.  
  
“OK,” she said, settling back at the big table, “let’s see if I have this right: you had this major, somewhat broken, magical rock, in your possession because you ran off with it.”  
  
Anya nodded cheerfully. “The Indiana Jones approach: grab the rock and run, carefully avoiding pygmies with blow-pipes, snakes, rivals, and back-stabbing assistants. A time-honored method.”  
  
“And you parked it for safe-keeping with your ex, who may have walked off with it himself, for all we know.”  
  
“Nuh-uh. Doesn’t have the brains. Besides, it’s a very ugly rock: it doesn’t look in the least valuable! Besides, I’ve taken vengeance on Olaf once already: he really, really wouldn’t like what I’d wish on him the second time around.”  
  
“You’re Vengeance Demoning again?”  
  
Anya shrugged. “I still have friends in the business. And would I ever be due a major vengeance for a betrayal like this! That stupid, Olaf isn’t. Mike will determine. Vamps are excellent trackers. And any vamp would know if the stone was anywhere near. It’s perfectly straightforward: I want my property back! Because it’s _mine_ , and timely recovery and sensible, profitable disposition will avert a possible apocalypse. Buffy, you don’t seem to be taking this as seriously as you should: you seem distracted. Is something wrong?”  
  
**********  
  
It was a heluva big troll. Very dead. A couple of hours, maybe. And Spike’s smell plain from twenty feet away, which was about as close as Mike cared to get.  
  
He’d been in jungles with people shooting at him and nothing like as spooked as he was now. Standing on a hill in the fucking _daylight_ , and the daylight the wrong color, in some other fucking _dimension_ (and what the hell did that mean?) and everything smelling strange and wrong, and if they said it was a troll Mike guessed they’d know, but he’d never in his life seen anything near so huge and ugly except a whore in Lagos and she hadn’t been anything like that size, and smack in the middle of it, Spike’s tag.  
  
His trace, still hanging in the air, plain as anything. Followed it right downhill, once Mike had more or less got over feeling like he’d been yanked inside-out, one second standing in the Magic Box, uncomfortably holding hands with Anya and the Slayer, and the next on this wrong-shaped hill, gullies not running the way they should, trees all wrong and flabby looking, and locking right onto the two familiar things: the smell of blood and death, off a ways, and Spike.  
  
He’d done this: Spike had. And how the hell was Mike supposed to play this?  
  
First thing, he decided, was not to throw up. Anybody always looked like a fool, doing that. Next thing was to keep his mouth shut, which should also help with the not throwing up part.  
  
It was like being seasick or like watching a 3-D movie without the special glasses.  
  
He turned his back and walked off a little distance upwind, like he was hunting a track. No need of that whatever, but it was something to do, a reason not to be standing over the huge ugly foul stinking corpse with the two women, who were talking in upset voices but didn’t seem to mind the light or the thoroughly alien landscape that was freaking Mike so bad.  
  
If he couldn’t get out of this light in the next five minutes, he was gonna come totally fucking unglued and _do_ something. Didn’t know what. Something.  
  
Expect a vamp to suddenly find himself in broad daylight and behave like it was nothing, like his demon wasn’t going absolutely apeshit, shaking so deep and constant it probably didn’t even show and what _was_ that smell? And how could Spike have been in this place and keep it together enough to take down a thing like that, that troll, not just be hunting a hole to hide from the light?  
  
Done it good, Spike had: took the throat right out. Blood everywhere roundabout. Women, they were stepping in it (don’t look!). So must not be good for feeding on, trolls. Might be good to know that, sometime. Spike’s blood, too, some. Mike stooped, touched, tasted. Not a lot, though. And the blood track went up, past those trees (?), back toward the wretched, crooked shack where they’d landed.  
  
God, he had to get _out_ of here before he made a total spectacle of himself!  
  
Anya, she was talking to him and he hadn’t taken in a word. He waved uphill and started off, leading them along the trace, staying well ahead and the Slayer at his back: didn’t like that, not one bit. Could feel her there, some way, Death right behind him, sizzling on his nerves, something he’d thought about but never actually _felt,_ and if he went for her, Spike would be months in showing him what a mistake that was. Unless, of course, the Slayer did him quick, which was a lot more likely.  
  
And he just stopped. Couldn’t hack it.  
  
Slayer, she circled him wide around, standing a good distance, watching him. “Mike…are you all right?”  
  
Mike made some sort of noise that wasn’t a laugh. “Bad place here. Let me be.”  
  
“Sunlight,” said the Slayer, and Mike glanced up and was surprised to see that she _knew_. “Your demon’s having problems with it.”  
  
Not mocking him for going all unstrung, like he might have expected. Just saying it, understanding. Neutral.  
  
Mike didn’t know what to make of that. Realized he was standing there truefaced, the demon damn near going into hysterics, and it wasn’t him. It was the demon. Demon was shaking him, not himself. He got that. Tried really hard to find the place inside that was just him, not the demon. Find a place to stand, accept the fact that this sun wasn’t hurting him, only the demon’s terror of it. Accept that the only way back was on: do what they’d brought him to do. Or some of it, anyway. Hold what he knew, which wasn’t much, steadily inside, not blurt it out just to be rid of the pressure of keeping shut about it.  
  
Only the demon. Not him. Inside, he shouted something like _Shut up, you maniac! You’re not helping here! I’ll get us out of this if you’ll just shut up!_  
  
And the demon backed off. Curled up and hid, some way. Trusted what he said and retreated.  
  
That had never happened to Mike before.  
  
Deliberately, because he could, he forced trueface back inside, where it belonged.  
  
“Killer went back up to the shack. Not there anymore, though. Nobody close at all.”  
  
Slayer, she didn’t move until he glanced and caught her eyes. Then she nodded, smelling and seeming all calm and steady. Businesslike.  
  
Mike thought he’d never really noticed the Slayer of her before, like he felt it in this place.  
  
He said, “Other day, when I pitched you off. I was totally out of line. Sorry.”  
  
“All settled and done,” she replied over her shoulder. “Don’t worry about it.” Then she stopped, turned, to assure him gravely, “Apology accepted.”  
  
They went on, the women, with the Slayer leading off, striding up the hill. Mike saw no reason to follow, instead going along his own track to the place they’d landed. Assuming the way in was also the way back, as good a place as any to wait for it to be done.  
  
He looked around at how things appeared in the wrong sunlight. How the shadows fell. Took note of the strange smells, even though he couldn’t interpret them. Might be useful, sometime. Just himself, standing there, taking notice. Separate from the demon. It felt strange, but much better than the panic.  
  
He took out the pocket watch. Not to check the time, just to hold it, see how it shone in the daylight. It steadied him, doing that.  
  
Figured he now knew why Spike had missed the sweep, last night. Mike had seen to it, but it had bothered him because it wasn’t like Spike to not leave word when plans changed. Some other business to attend to, apparently. When it became Mike’s business, Spike would tell him. Still, he didn’t like not being told. Not knowing what he was supposed to be doing, how to play things.  
  
He’d wait until Spike told him what to do about this business with the fucking troll. There should be a chance for that, at Dawn’s party tonight. Whatever else was going on, Spike wouldn’t miss that. Keep shut about it, in the meantime.  
  
Presently the women came back toward him, talking between themselves. When they came close, Anya called, “Mike, do you know the Chaos Stone? That felt like a tiny Hellmouth?”  
  
It was a dumb question: every vamp in Sunnydale who’d survived the Turok-han would know the call that thing put out, though hardly any would know it by sight or be able to put a name to it. However, Mike didn’t say so, just bobbed his head.  
  
Anya continued, “Can you feel it here?”  
  
“It’s not here. Can we go back now?”  
  
“Are you sure?”  
  
Mike didn’t want to piss her off, considering she was the only one who knew how to get back. “I’m real sure. It’s not anyplace around here. Is that what you’re looking for?”  
  
“Yes,” she admitted, as though it cost her something. “Olaf, my ex, was keeping it for me.” The downhill tilt of her head said she meant the troll.  
  
Her ex. Unless she was a shape-changer, like the demon whore in Lagos, the lady had fucking strange taste in fucking. Didn't seem all that cut up, though, to find him that way. Mainly annoyed, seemed like. Mike was gonna have to reconsider.  
  
“If I notice it, I’ll tell you about it,” he offered, and that seemed to be finally enough: she held out both hands, one to him and one to the Slayer.  
  
Mike had never expected he’d be so glad to hold hands with the Slayer.  
  
**********  
  
Willow decided that everybody other than herself was totally crazed.  
  
There were vamps in the basement, digging. Waving small jars, Xander wanted to talk about the magical refractive index of latex paint, as compared to oil-based. Noticing that Buffy looked tense and depressed, Willow gladly turned from Xander’s bizarre questions and suggested they go mall-hopping tomorrow afternoon after they finished class and work, respectively. She was astonished when Buffy’s face crumpled and Buffy burst into tears and ran off upstairs. When Willow started to follow, Rona caught her by the front door, where the SITs, in overalls, T-shirts, and bandannas, were checking in deliveries, asking if she’d seen Spike.  
  
Without waiting for Willow to respond, Rona explained, “He didn’t collect the tribute this morning, nor yesterday evening, neither. And he’s not answering his cell, no matter how long you wait. Huey thought maybe he made do with what’s flown in for the fledges, but Sue says not, it was all there. So--”  
  
“Sue?” Willow interrupted blankly.  
  
Rona stopped in mid-gesture: frowning, puzzled, slightly impatient. “You know: Sue! Suzanne. That got herself turned in Chicago, came--”  
  
“Oh: _that_ Sue,” Willow responded meekly. “How does Sue come into it?”  
  
“Through the pipes. She’s in the basement.” Rona’s eyes widened. “Oh, you mean, like, come _into_ it! Well, she’s a fledge, isn’t she, so she’d know if they’d been shorted. And I know we said we’d do for him, but not if he’s gonna pass up perfectly good tribute blood ‘cause he’s too frickin’ lazy to go collect it. Anyway, if you see him, tell him I brought it all and stuck it in the fridge, in the vegetable crisper, and if he don’t get it soon, it’s gonna go off on account of no preservatives?” With a brisk nod, Rona turned back to comparing the contents of a box against a checklist, leaving Willow with her jaw hanging and the impulse to wibble her lips with a forefinger, indicative of extreme bafflement.  
  
Then Anya came out of the den to announce she’d stuck Willow’s laptop and reference materials in the cupboard, to clear the table, and wanting to know when the next batch of smell would be ready, since the current supply was almost exhausted and it wasn’t good business sense to create a demand and not be geared up to fulfill it.  
  
Hands on blue-aproned hips, hair done up in a multicolored scarf, Anya waited expectantly for an answer.  
  
Feeling not merely pinned down but skewered like a bug, Willow protested that nobody had even told her the supply was getting low and she’d expected to have a post-mortem on the effects before going to fullscale production.  
  
“Why?” Anya asked brightly. “Has it died?” Then she, too, went into the pained lip-tremble, the welling and wounded eyes, and sobbed, “He wasn’t much, or actually he was quite a bit too much, but he was _my_ moron, and I’ll miss him!” Then she flung herself into Willow’s uncertain embrace and wept heartily on her shoulder while Willow tentatively patted her back and made _there, there_ noises, staring past Anya at the SITs, but they either ignored her mute appeal or shrugged to indicate they didn’t know what’d gotten into Anya either.  
  
After a couple of minutes, Anya sniffed loudly, blew her nose on a tissue from her apron pocket, and announced, “I’m such a weak, weepy sentimentalist, considering that the local equivalent of wolves and badgers are probably gobbling up his entrails right now. Trolls aren’t much for funerals, it only encourages neighbors being eaten by the immediate family. So I honor their customs.” She dabbed at her eyes. “You still haven’t given me a delivery date for the smell.”  
  
“A week?” Willow suggested feebly.  
  
“Well, if that’s the best you can do.”  
  
“I think Buffy said something about having part of the last carton in the SUV.”  
  
Anya clapped her hands. “Oh, that’s splendid! Broken down and repackaged, that should last at least that long. I had the foresight to lay in ten gross of the more attractive, smaller bottles, so there’s just the decanting and labeling to be done. And don’t worry: a 40% share goes to Spike Enterprises, Inc., just as I told Buffy. All properly accounted for, every drop. I’m certainly aware of the need for fluid assets, now that Buffy’s been fired. Where are the van keys?”  
  
“In the saucer. On the weapons chest,” Willow said, pointing like a statue of Fate. _Fired?_  
  
“Thanks!” With a friendly arm pat, Anya went off to rescue the carton from languishing uselessly in the vehicle.  
  
 _Fired?_  
  
Going upstairs and tapping cautiously at Buffy’s door, Willow found her curled up on the bed and sobbing into Mr. Gordo’s well-worn plush. Sitting on the foot of the bed, Willow put on crinkle-eyebrow concern face and got the whole account of Buffy’s magnificently awful day. _So far_ , she thought darkly, since the party was yet to come.  
  
“Don’t worry,” she assured Buffy earnestly. “Spike’s been paying me as a consultant--you know: Spells and Smells?” (That got her a watery smile and a sniffy chuckle.) “And he’s been keeping right up with it, too: all Mr. Efficiency, if you can believe that. And I was thinking about a new computer, mine’s already two years old and that’s a little clunky for a high-speed pipe, but really, really, that can wait!” Willow waved her hands emphatically. “And I have my scholarship, and that covers living expenses just about, if you happen to be a rat or something.” _And what HAD become of Amy_ , she wondered, the house all vacant and standing open, then shook herself back to the topic. “It’s not as if Spike won’t be chipping in, either. Or too, depending on how you look at it. And Anya’s on our side, making money hand over fist on the smell we paid to produce and giving us a whopping 40% of the take. So how could we possibly lose out, here? There’s plenty of time, months, before we have to start tightening the old belt. I’m way no on the belt tightening!” She patted Buffy’s shoulder. “It’s not as if it was a real job or anything, Buffy.”  
  
Buffy teared up a little again. “But it was mine, and I liked it. Felt like I was really helping, at least sometimes. Used the spell-checker on all my reports, when there was time, hardly ever late, even skipped lunch sometimes, sat through nearly every one of those stupid all-faculty-and-staff meetings--”  
  
“There, there. I know you did. A model of punctuality and attendance, and who could ask for more? You already have a calling, Buffy, and that’s way better than some stupid part-time charity job!”  
  
“The pay sucks rocks big time.”  
  
“Well, that’s the thing about a calling: you don’t get to dicker. Picketing is also heavily discouraged.”  
  
“You _bet_ it is! Thanks, Will.” Pushing hair out of her face, Buffy made another watery smile. “Maybe I’m getting past the panic-stricken, going to the poorhouse _now_ phase. But it was just so awful, feeling like a total loser in the wonderful world of Real Life, and I couldn’t get ahold of anybody, and then Anya shrieking in my ear about the wretched Chaos Stone…. I hate to admit it, but it was almost a relief.”  
  
“Yay, distractions,” commented Willow absently, biting her bottom lip. “I don’t like it, about the stone being gone. True, I don’t like the stone, it made me all itchy until Spike tuned it, but if somebody could hook it into the dimensional instability that’s all that’s left the Hellmouth….” She looked up, and her eyes and Buffy’s traded unspoken information and agreement.  
  
“Could be bad, yeah. Would Amy have the--?”  
  
“Not on her best day. Anyway, she’s gone. No, no idea where. But it’s not like Amy’s the only witch in the world, or even in Sunnydale. Only the cheapest, who’ll take commissions from vamps…. Present company excluded, of course. Buffy, we’ve been spread too thin. We’re all keeping track of our little piece, not comparing notes nearly often enough. There’s just too much going on. We have to start having regular meetings again, like we used to. Before Giles….” Willow stopped delicately, to see if that was gonna set off the waterworks again.  
  
“I know. I should be calling them, but I’ve been all caught up in this back-and-forth push-pull business with Spike. Not arguing about control, not really…just trying to make things fit, somehow. He’s trying as hard as I am to find ways to keep helping without letting everything he’s responsible for go smash, doing it.”  
  
“But it drains the energy,” Willow commented sympathetically, and Buffy nodded heavily several times.  
  
“Oh, yes: major energy suckage, big time. It’s just so frickin’ hard to _connect_.”  
  
“Oh, I don’t know,” Willow said with lifted lip corners. “Somebody missed curfew by quite a bit, last Tuesday. I sort of thought some kind of connecting thing was going on. Like the No-Tell Motel?”  
  
“Exercise mats under the bleachers,” Buffy replied wrily. “The epitome of wild romance. Well, some kind of epitome, anyway.” She smiled, eyes downcast. “But he _does_ try.”  
  
“I’ve always said that,” Willow affirmed. “That Spike, he’s a tryer. Haven’t you always heard me say that?”  
  
Buffy shrugged gracefully. “I guess. Even if he didn’t turn up for patrol last night. No big. So I’m totally with the mission here, all right? M for mission, M for meetings. After the party?”  
  
Willow blew out a breath, blinking. “Yeah. All right. I’ll spread the word. Even Spike, if I can find him. It seems as if he’s Mr. Unavailable: even Xander asked if I’d seen him.”  
  
“Oh, he’d never miss Dawn’s party. Even if Dawn’s not here to enjoy it. He’s probably curled up in an abandoned refrigerator someplace, having a nice nap. Do normal people have lives like this? Stop, don’t answer that!”  
  
“Then you’d have to kill me?”  
  
“Then a skipping return to the great pink hereafter wouldn’t look quite so attractive.”  
  
It was Buffy’s first reference in a long time to Willow’s dragging her out of heaven. Buffy said it lightly and waited to smile until Willow risked looking at her, making her know that was over enough to finally have become joke-worthy.  
  
“Was it pink?” Willow asked cautiously.  
  
“I honestly forget. Probably.” Rolling off the bed, Buffy began poking through her closet. Turning only her head, she commented, “If we have a meeting, I may finally find out what Xander’s been doing in the basement. I’m not sure if I’ll survive the revelation. I’ll just change costume for Action Barbie and I’ll be right with you guys.”  
  
“Ah, Buffy? A suggestion? Before you change, shower. A definite aroma of demon goo….”  
  
“Yeah--tramping around dimensions where the grass is brown and the dirt is green in my office clothes: whatever could I have been thinking? Ruined my shoes, too. Not demon, though: troll.”  
  
Willow nodded. “Anya said. Sic transit baby-devouring Olaf.”  
  
“Rest in pieces.” Buffy reached for a robe. “The memory lingers on, huh?”  
  
Willow held her nose. “I’ve become a minor expert in the field. Trust me: you don’t want anybody but your best friend noticing.”  
  
“Then I’m lucky my best friend noticed,” Buffy said so warmly that Willow had a happy little shiver. “Luckily, my only company was Anya. So no danger there.”  
  
Leaving Buffy to it, Willow glanced at Dawn’s shut door, decided against knocking, and clopped down the stairs to the busy hallway.  
  
She’d make cookies, she decided. Not that there seemed any lack of food, but she felt her cookie-making had become traditional for affairs of this sort. Good cookies, like good magic, were the product of art and had to be done by hand.  
  
Thinking over the circumstances of Buffy’s dismissal, Willow thought, _The smell’s too hot. Huh. Imagine that._ And Spike hadn’t said word one to her about it. Maybe he liked it that way: Mr. Cheekbones-Slinkyhips should be a good judge of degrees of hotitude. She should check with him before changing the formula. Get it too tame and nobody would wear it and worse, it wouldn’t sell. It was a truism: hotitude sold.  
  
Since Spike's translation was what provided the fuel that ran this whole maybe-too-diversified operation, it seemed to Willow that he should have the deciding vote about the formula. It was a truism: hotitude sold.  
  
How did anybody expect her to coordinate production if nobody bothered to tell her anything?  
  
**********  
  
Mike woke when Sue touched his arm. She said, “We’re through.”  
  
She looked nearly as droopy eyed and dim as he felt, and likely was worse, since he’d had his sleep out, even if in bits and patches. But she’d been hellbent to be part of this detail, nagged Spike something fierce until he gave in, on the grounds that from her time with Digger, she knew shoring. Knew how to slot the ties so the ends met neat, hold the crosspiece overhead, against the ceiling, while the two struts got braced underneath. Then a couple of long nails at the joints for reinforcement, against shift. If the shaft was cut true and checked for plumb and level every couple of feet, wasn’t really anyplace for the ties to shift _to._ But heavy rains were at least possible, if unlikely; the soil was sandy; and the deforested hills roundabout might produce a mudslide like other California communities had suffered, now and again.  
  
Spike wanted this tunnel solid when everything aboveground was flat. Like an A-bomb hit, for instance. Didn’t matter that was even less likely than the mudslide--that was what he wanted, and Mike’s job was to see that he got it.  
  
Any idiot could dig, was Sue’s contention, but shoring, that was skilled labor.  
  
With an actual carpenter heading things up and Mike as site boss, wasn’t a whole lot of need for a fledge with a couple weeks’ experience in trimming ties. As a fledge on probation, Mike had shored up the equivalent of maybe a dozen city blocks before Digger judged him fit for the open air and free hunting, but that was all right. It was enough if Mike checked the girl’s work a couple times a shift, made what few adjustments were needed, checked the overall progress, and catnapped the rest of the time. If she wants it, leave her to it, Spike had said, and that was good enough for Mike.  
  
Giving her a chance to prove herself: all anybody could ask, was Mike’s opinion. And Spike was real good about that.  
  
Mike rolled to sitting, then jumped up and paced the completed shaft, inspecting it. It sloped down, of course: wouldn’t want muddy rainwater backing up into the Slayer’s basement. The four vamps of the digging crew stood aside to let him edge past, Sue trotting at his heels and breathing anxiously whenever he stopped to give the shoring a good shove. Had to pass under a sewer line, then angle back up to reach the big concrete storm drain beyond. The opening was cut high: Mike had to duck and bend double to get head and shoulders through to check. Some loose dirt fell into his hair and down the neck of his shirt. Seemed good enough: the drain ran off to both sides at a slight angle, and there was a junction a few yards off: made for added stability and less chance of being trapped in the shaft by waiting opposition. Crash through that and you were home free. From the junction, you could get damn near anyplace in Sunnydale regardless of the sun.  
  
Backing out, Mike nodded his satisfaction. He told the nearest digger, “Clear off now: people here are having a party and don’t want muddy monsters underfoot. Spike’s laid out for liquor. If you’re not back to the factory in half an hour to drink it, it goes to the sweep crew.” That last was a lie, because the booze was drugged. Keep them all peacefully passed out till Spike could confirm that he wanted them dusted, to keep knowledge of the tunnel as close as possible. Mike responded to their fangy grins amiably and pushed back against the tunnel wall so they could dash past. More dirt down his collar.  
  
He turned and found Sue still there. “I’m staying for the party,” she announced. “’Manda said I could. I have clothes to change into. Fed up, and everything.”  
  
“’Manda doesn’t have the say over where you go or what you do,” Mike pointed out sternly. “You been crawling around in the dirt for hours. Fed or not, you can’t shed trueface ten minutes at a time and how’s the Slayer gonna explain you--say you have a disease?”  
  
“You’re as dirty as me,” Sue responded boldly, “and _I_ don’t stink. And _you’re_ going!”  
  
“What I do is no concern of yours. Spike said the fledges go back, so you go back. Have your blowout. You did a good job here and I’ll tell Spike so.”  
  
Finally he saw her, still whining and complaining, off down the pipe. When she turned at the junction, he listened awhile longer, then turned the other way. Sun was down, and the drain ran close by Casa Mike, where he’d left the bike, clean clothes, and a few other things. Though he no longer laired there, it was nearby and handy sometimes.  
  
An hour later, showered and changed and (by his own estimate) no offense to nose or eye, he presented himself on the front porch of Casa Summers and rang the bell. The Lady Gates opened the door like a servant too full of herself to actually let anybody in.  
  
Sticking his hands in the pockets of his bomber jacket, Mike said, “They got you doing this, huh?” with a certain sympathy.  
  
“It fortifies the pretense that it’s my party. Are you coming in, or do you need to be invited?”  
  
“No, got that all taken care of, thanks.” He slid past the threshold. Bending to her ear, he said softly, “Let her come out. Let her have her time. What are you scared of, that you can’t spare her a couple of hours?”  
  
She turned away so fast her hair whipped his face. Mike didn’t mind. The hair streaked his skin with Dawnsmell, which was just fine, except no Dawn to go with it.  
  
“I have things to attend to. Amuse yourself,” she directed without turning, lifting a hand, fingers artistically spread. Now Dawn, she’d have made a naughty gesture but Lady Gates was all into draping herself morosely against walls and looking bored out of her mind.  
  
Well, nobody could accuse her of doing anything frivolous, like having a good time. Easing through into the front room, he found it plain enough where the presents went: a little stack of brightly wrapped boxes on the floor by the television. Mike snuck the box out of his pocket and set it safe in back: didn’t want something to land on it. Then he moved it to the side, but that was no good because the tiny card would get bent. So he put it in the back again. When everything else was moved away, it’d be seen well enough, he figured.  
  
Xander and Anya were on the couch, opposite ends, Xander radiating nervousness, maybe because Anya was going on about the troll, about what he’d been like to fuck, and that would likely make anybody nervous. All the same, Harris had something about him that suggested he’d like to get lucky, do a couple of turns with her, and had some hopes in that direction. No accounting for all the effort humans put into a simple thing like fucking. Not like anybody really gave a damn. It would be like getting all wound up over sneezing, or some other automatic reaction.  
  
He vaguely recalled he’d once felt different about it, but that was before and didn’t signify.  
  
Squatting by the couch end Harris was hanging onto like it might buck him off any minute, Mike reported quietly, “Tunnel’s all done but the doors. I set the screen across, on the inside. You were gonna see to the doors, I recall.”  
  
“Yeah, fine, good.” Looking him up and down, Harris remarked, “You’re all cleaned up. Hair wetted down and combed, and everything.”  
  
It was a question, though it didn’t sound that way. “Slayer said I should come.”  
  
“Sure, fine. Well, Buffy’s collecting coats out in the hall, and there’s a discreet bar set up by the refrigerator to make the evening slightly less bizarre for us grownups. You _are_ a grownup, right?”  
  
As they stood up together, Mike replied, “I’m six.”  
  
“Six? Is that like dog years?”  
  
“No. Vamp years,” Mike said, happily deadpan, and watched Harris do a gulp and a take.  
  
“Michael! I didn’t see you there!” exclaimed Anya, holding out both arms like she expected he was gonna bend down and hug her. She didn’t look at all put out, though, that he didn’t. “I can’t imagine how I could miss anyone of such imposing stature!”  
  
Fact was, he and Harris were about eye-to-eye, though Harris was toting around considerable lard. Mike saw no point in saying so, just nodded.  
  
“Xander, take his jacket. What is it, about…certain people and leather? Michael, give Xander your jacket so I can see you!”  
  
Uncomfortably aware of Lady Gates’ sardonic eye on him, Mike complied. After being invited, he’d chosen out a brand new, never-worn T-shirt: light blue, with the sentiment in white across the front, _DO tell me about your gall bladder surgery!_ and across the back, _and I’ll show photos of my grand-niece toasting kittens!_ He didn’t know why, it’d just tickled him. Anya, she just blinked, but maybe she wasn’t reading the sentiment. Lady Gates, though, came and leaned to read the front, then slapped both hands across her mouth and ran off, fizzing. So somebody had appreciated it, anyway, he guessed.  
  
Anya said more nice things about him, calling him “Michael” a few more times, which he didn’t particularly like, and then started asking about his progress in locating Ethan Rayne: whispering and glancing fast left and right, as though she worried that the empty room would overhear. A vamp in the basement could have followed every word, but Mike still thought it odd.  
  
“Know some places he’s _been_ ,” Mike admitted, which he figured wasn’t saying all that much, then was spared having to say anything else by Harris leaning in at the arch, wanting to know his preference in drinkables. That gave Mike an excuse to follow along to the kitchen, where Red was mixing something pink in a shaker. Smelled like fruit, mango, peach, orange, and rum so dark it was nearly black. Pointing at the shaker, Mike asked, “That just for you?”  
  
She quirked her mouth and tilted her head, surprised. “No, it’s not exclusive, you can have some if you like. I was just gonna mix in some crushed ice, but….”  
  
“Fine just like that.”  
  
“All righty, then!” she said cheerily. As Harris exited, Red poured from the shaker into a champagne flute through a strainer. Gently, Mike separated her from flute and strainer and laid the latter aside, because she’d been straining out all the good part. Then he hovered his hand, offering to manage what was obviously, to her, a heavy and unwieldy object. She shrugged off his offer sharply, though he hadn’t meant to offend, then did a quick Anya-style left-and-right check and floated the shaker. Took her some frowning concentration to make it pour straight, not lose the cap and slop all over, but Mike held the flute steady and the transfer was accomplished.  
  
When he took a small drink and then finished it all, she let the shaker come to rest on the top of the island and smiled. Letting go the rigidity, she started cutting up more fruit cheerfully enough. Glancing up, she commented not-quite-apologetically, “I don’t like being loomed at.”  
  
As pleasantly, Mike commented, “It’s a wonder anybody does magic at all, considering how it stinks them up.”  
  
Her face went pink. Then she said, “Hazard of the trade. Is it good?”  
  
Mike collected a second flute from those stacked on a tray near the sink and took up the shaker one-handed. “Want it strained?”  
  
She shook her head, fluffing auburn hair around her face. Pretty, Mike thought, and powerful after her own fashion, and determined not to be impressed by big moon-faced louts with stupid expressions. Lifting her chin, she declared, “If you can take it raw, so can I.”  
  
Another sentiment Mike might like to see on a shirt. Steadying the cap with a thumb, he poured the flute half full in case she wanted ice, after all. She took a gulp, then made quite a business of swallowing. “Chewy,” she remarked, when she could talk.  
  
“Yeah. Good like that,” Mike agreed.  
  
“Something about an all liquid diet,” she reflected. “Spike likes Weetabix in his blood. Like Wheat Chex, only British,” she explained, catching right on that he didn’t understand. She licked her lips pensively. “Think I’ve got enough rum in there?”  
  
“Let you know. Might take a bit more sugar, though.”  
  
“ _More?_ That rum is practically alkified molasses already!”  
  
“The way it’s made in the Barbados, there’s more sugar. Sometimes lemons, too. There’s no one set way.”  
  
“I’ve been to Bath,” she announced. “Also the Cotswolds. And Devon.”  
  
“Never been to Devon,” Mike admitted, amused by her immediate, defensive world-hopping one-upmanship. “Then again, I’m only six,” he added, to see if he could pull the same reaction from her as he had from Harris. But she just twitched an absent smile, herding the cut fruit pieces together with the blade of the big knife. Then she lost patience and scooped the fruit up between two palms and dumped it in the shaker, that apparently doubled as the top part of a blender. “Hands don’t count, do they?” she asked, pouring in the rum in a slow, glugging stream.  
  
“Never minded in the Barbados.”  
  
She set the cap and turned on the blender, which made a hellacious racket, blessedly brief. Snapping the switch, she gave him a sideways look. “Are you flirting? Because if you are--”  
  
“Just trying to get through the time, not piss nobody off. Spike said be here, so I am. Anya, _she_ flirts.”  
  
She made a hiccupy, surprised laugh. “ _And_ then treats everybody to the post-game recap, blow by blow by blow. That sounds dirty, doesn’t it,” she reflected, licking her fingers. “I didn’t mean it that way, except of course that it _is_ dirty, and I’m supposed to be bringing this to the den where everybody is now having cake and other munchables, and pretending that it’s punch, just like what the officially underaged are getting, so why don’t you come along and save me from further embarrassment? You could bring that tray of flutes…?”  
  
The den was the main party room, with a Happy Birthday paper cover over the big table and assorted balloons he ducked warily, getting back near the big sideboard, out of the way. Besides Lady Gates, two other girls about the same age were sitting there chatting up a storm between them, not seeming to notice the Lady was pushing a small piece of yellow cake around her plate and then mashing with the tines of her fork, looking as if, on the whole, she’d rather be in Philadelphia.  
  
Mike declined cake but accepted another flute of the pink punch, the kind from the shaker, not the kind from the bowl on the table, with the ladle in it. About 90 proof, was his guess, and the rum about half of it. Already had something of a buzz from it. So he’d stop with this one. Never had had Spike’s head for liquor. Or his taste for it, neither. Never knew anybody to get themselves fighting mad, and maybe dusted, after a couple of joints. But that seemed to be part of what Spike liked about it.  
  
And Spike still wasn’t here. Mike had been watching for him every minute since he’d come through the door, but not a trace of him. And the table was being cleared now, the punchbowl and the remains of the cake moved off to the sideboard in preparation for the laying out of presents.  
  
Harris carried them in on a tray, the whole pile wobbling precariously, so that Mike was real nervous until they were safely set down. Didn’t see his own tiny box, but that was all right: he’d go get it if it’d been missed, if Harris hadn’t stepped on it. Thought, because the presents were there, the unwrapping would be done in the front room but that had just been storage, while the food was laid out.  
  
Lady Gates made a methodical business of opening the presents. Read each card aloud: “To Dawn. From Anya.” Then opened it: an envelope with a stock certificate. Then it was a pair of earrings from Harris. A leather-bound blank notebook from one of the girls, Luanne. A scarf from the other, Janice. With each, the Lady would look the giver straight in the eyes and say exactly the same thing: “It’s very nice. Thank you.” Then she’d give one melancholy twitch of a smile. It was like watching something animatronic. The girls didn’t seem to notice or care although the Janice girl smelled a bit uncomfortable. The adults, though, were starting to look around, like they’d much sooner be in Philadelphia, too.  
  
The last present was Buffy’s: a watch. It got the same dead-eyed reception as the rest.  
  
Then the Lady sat straight in her chair, fists on the table, and announced, “There’s nothing from Spike. Why is there nothing from Spike?”  
  
As the Slayer was explaining with tight restraint that she didn’t know, Mike leaned and set aside the notebook, which he’d been itching to do since watching it get set on top of his present.  
  
“Oh,” said the Lady, picking off the card. “To Dawn. From Mike.” She gave him a speculative glance, pulling off the squashed bow and then the ribbon. She opened the box and lifted the fold of tissue. And her face changed. And she screeched, holding the little box in the basket of her hands, head thrown back, pulse rate exploding.  
  
Mike had sort of hoped she’d like it. He’d first gotten chocolates, a nothing sort of gift, had it wrapped and everything. Then he’d changed his mind. Gone back to the case he’d smelled her hand-print on, one time he’d been shadowing her and Spike through the mall, after she’d first taken against him. One look and he’d known what she’d leaned down, hand on the free-standing display, to examine and then leave behind.  
  
A blown glass redgold winged dragon with flutters and streamers of whiskers, mane: could hardly look at it without destroying some tiny thread. Couldn’t find one with dragonfly wings, like a real Taskin, like the one she’d brought down on a rocky hillside and him too far away and barred by the sunlight from doing a single thing about it, far out of the carbine’s effective range, her running and fighting every second just the same, her and unseen Spike someplace behind or under the beautiful, deadly creature they’d some way contrived to kill between them. Didn’t seem to make any like that, out of glass. But this was the one she’d stopped by and bent to look at, her hand-print smelling all sad, so he’d hoped she’d know what he meant by it and at least like it for the praise of her it was, even though it was only his present and not very lifelike neither on account of the wings being wrong.  
  
Dawn Dragonslayer.  
  
“Get out!” she screeched. “Get out, get out, get out! You’re no help at all, you just watch and fiddle and do nothing! And I’m sick of it! Sick to bloody death of it, and you can just do me now or else get the hell out! I’ll trash your files, I’ll trash your whole fucking system so bad you’ll never get it sorted! You LEAVE ME ALONE!”  
  
Mike had slid into the hallway, believing it was him she was screaming at. Not wanting to be there or anyplace around. Didn’t care about the jacket, didn’t need it, not gonna paw through the closet looking for it, just fuck it and get gone. He was about halfway down the basement stairs when it came to him that it was Dawn, truly Dawn, reading the riot act to Lady Gates, and turned back.  
  
She was now screeching, “Where’s Spike? He wouldn’t not be here, not for anything. Where is he?”  
  
Behind him, someplace down in the dark basement, something breathed, and moved, and a skittery little chuckle. Mike went down, one balanced, controlled step at a time, letting trueface flow outward for the acuity.  
  
Humming, so soft even he could barely hear it: gave him a location--the opposite wall, moving from right to left. Not yet in view: he was still too high on the stairs.  
  
Then he caught the trace and relaxed, settling midway down the stairs with a thump. “Spike, what the goddam hell you been doing? Just take off, leave everybody hanging, covering for you.”  
  
More humming, and a rasping noise: a hand scraping cement block. “No shackles,” Spike responded in a sing-song voice, like he was making some joke Mike didn’t get. “No more shackles. All free. But I didn’t go up yet. S’posed to, but I didn’t. Figured it out, Michael: s’not the blood. It’s the hunting that’s the main thing. Never work without. But I’m s’posed to go up now. Give Bit her present.”  
  
“What the hell are you on?” Mike demanded, furious at the doubletalk nonsense, and dropped down the remaining stairs with enough of a push, he was facing Spike no more than two feet off.  
  
Stripped to the waist, ghostly pale in the darkness, Spike was working his way along the far wall, passing his right hand across the cinderblock as though in search of something. No smell of liquor whatever. Nor any smell of the other place, neither, with the wrong sunlight. None of the troll. But he stank of magic. And there was strong bloodsmell, strong as the shock of mothballs: from what Spike held in his left hand. Dangling a twisted ribbon from the middle finger, a human hand.  
  
 _Gift-wrapped_ , Mike thought, with a sense like being punched in the gut.  
  
“Spike. You just settle, all right? We’ll get this sorted out. Dawn’s back: she wants to see you. So you settle, and I’ll get the Slayer--”  
  
“Yeah. Right. So, Michael: do you think she’ll like her prezzie?”  
  
Spike turned half around, and he was grinning. His eyes were completely empty. And Mike went for him, knowing he didn’t dare go back upstairs and leave this behind him. Made contact for a second but Spike’s torso and arms were greased, oiled, something, and Mike couldn’t keep hold. And the skin-to-skin contact burned, sudden and fierce. He yelled for the Slayer, loud as he could. Before he’d got more than the first syllable out he got kneed in the chin and knocked crooked, down on his side on the cement. Rebounding the next instant, he lunged to block the stairs and got cracked behind the ear with what felt like a piece of pipe. Held onto the railing, finding his balance again, hearing that weird skittery little chuckle some ways off now.  
  
Spike was gone. Off down the tunnel. And by the smell, left his fuck-ugly little present behind.


	12. A Hole in the Air

Leaning wearily on the edge of the half-open door, Buffy said, “And the fun just keeps on coming.”  
  
Clustered on the front porch--the two guys in front and the rest huddled anxiously behind--about a dozen kids from the safety class looked back at her with expressions variously hopeful, indignant, worried, and glum.  
  
The lead guy said, “When we went to the gym, there was a sign that the class was canceled. And then Mona said she’d seen you clearing out your office this morning. So…I guess there was a problem about the dance?”  
  
“Seems so, Andy.”  
  
The guy pointed to his companion. “He’s Andy. I’m George.” He looked embarrassed for her mistake.  
  
Buffy shut her eyes. In the den, Dawn and Lady Gates were arguing over who should have present tenancy of the body. In the front room, Mike was refusing to sit down to recover from a probable concussion and Willow and Anya were trying to keep him from bolting before he’d said what had happened in the basement. Xander was off conveying Janice and Luanne to their respective homes, charged with coming up with some explanation of Dawn’s screaming fit that wouldn’t stir up still more trouble. And still no sign of Spike, which had begun to worry her.  
  
Just when it seemed there was no way things could be more bizarre and nerve-wracking, the doorbell rang and Buffy found herself confronting a deputation from the course.  
  
Before Buffy had thought of anything to say, Anya and Willow came backing out ahead of a thunderously scowling Mike: a rather scary prospect with blood in his hair and soaked into his shirt’s neckband. Buffy wheeled, blocking the door with her body, and Mike hauled up short, then pivoted (Willow dodged out of his way) and started off down the hall.  
  
“Mike,” Buffy called, finding within herself a flat voice of command, knowing force would be a real bad thing to try here. “Stay put five minutes, until I understand what’s going on. All right?”  
  
Mike didn’t answer, but he halted.  
  
Meanwhile Anya had been listening to the deputation’s grievances and concerns with exclamations of “No!” and “I had no idea! That’s terrible!” Turning to Buffy, she said, “They canceled your class?”  
  
Buffy shrugged. “Sort of goes with the whole being-fired dealie.”  
  
“Well, all of you come by the Magic Box tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll have a notice posted of the new schedule. And anyone who’s short of the new experimental scent, I have it on sale for only ten dollars a bottle, so you can stock up.” Anya smiled at them brilliantly.  
  
George (or Andy, whichever it was) said, “So you’re going on with it, Ms. Summers?” seeking Buffy’s confirmation.  
  
“Of course she is!” Anya declared. “Other arrangements will have to be made, that’s all. And there may be a small fee involved, since it’s no longer a school-sponsored activity. Overhead, you understand. But you all appear suitably affluent, so I’m sure it will be no hardship.”  
  
One of the girls in the back--Buffy thought it was Candy--chirped, “And Spike: he’s still part of it, right?”  
  
“Of course! Spike’s always involved. That’s a given where Buffy is concerned. Now don’t forget, come by the Magic Box tomorrow and the new schedule will be posted. Goodbye!” Shoving the door shut with her back, Anya lost the smile. “Buffy, I don’t understand you at all. You should have told me immediately! You’ve developed this fine commercial possibility and there’s just no follow-through. I don’t understand at all. You’ve left me barely any time to negotiate a different venue. I’ll have to call Albert at home, very unprofessional, but I trust he’ll understand.” Going into the front room, she sat sideways on the weapons chest, dialing the fixed phone that lived there.  
  
Willow asked softly, “What was all that about?”  
  
“I have no idea.” Taking a steadying breath, Buffy got everybody into the front room and more or less seated, except Mike, who leaned against the wall, sullenly inspecting his boots.  
  
Standing in the door arch, arms folded, Buffy said to him, “What you ran into, in the basement--Spike, right?”  
  
Mike shook his head. “Didn’t say that. Not saying nothing.”  
  
Looking around, Anya interrupted her call to direct Buffy, “Tell everybody about the Chaos Stone being stolen.”  
  
“To put this all in context,” what was plainly Lady Gates began, back in control, just as Xander blew in the front door, a grocery bag in his arms, voicing the desperate plaint, “Beer?”  
  
So everything stopped and there was yet another sorting--mainly beer distributed and snacks set out--before the conference resumed. Ducking Anya’s solicitous approach with a wet towel, Mike got himself cleaned up and smoked a funny smelling cigarette on the porch. He seemed calmer when he came back, consenting to sit on the floor by the TV and turning a cold beer can around and around in his hands without opening it.  
  
Perched prissily on the couch like a posed mannequin, undeterred by the interruption, Lady Gates began again, “To put this all in context and starting from the top, a Chaos Mage called Ethan Rayne is gathering materials and forces needed for an attempt to reopen the Hellmouth. Whichever of them initiated the contact, it’s plain that he’s currently in collaboration with a vampire called Digger and a witch named Amy Madison, as well as calling other mages, wizards, and the like, of various disciplines, to him. Since the mass virgin sacrifice was aborted by you and Spike,” (the Lady nodded at Buffy,) “Rayne has instead secured for a power source a magical artifact, a dimensional key known as the Chaos Stone. However, this artifact alone, untuned, is not sufficient for the task. As it currently is, it scatters any power directed into it and might well scorch severely…or kill…any mage, however skilled, who tried to manipulate it. He--”  
  
“This is all your fault,” Anya told Willow, glowering. “I told you about the stone in the strictest confidence, and you blabbed!”  
  
“I never!”  
  
“Anya,” said the Lady, and Anya shut up instantly, looking nervous. “Your injudicious prattle has been more extensive than you evidently remember. Though my contact has been interrupted, Spike knew the stone’s location--you’d told him in the course of a phone call. That’s how Rayne learned about it: he now has access to whatever Spike knows. As a means of securing and controlling the stone, and in furtherance of Digger’s aims, Rayne has bespelled Spike and compelled him to become his instrument and agent. And I don’t like it. I won’t tolerate it. We’ve claimed Spike for our instrument and will not have that subverted. However, in any direct contest for control between us and Rayne, Spike would be…broken. That outcome is intolerable to the part of us that is Dawn. Her perspective and sensibilities are now part of our view and must be taken into account, in terms of what action we determine to take.”  
  
“See?” Willow declared to Anya, who seemed to take no notice, gazing at Mike with hard, suspicious eyes.  
  
“Michael, who killed Olaf? You didn’t say, so I assumed you didn’t know. You let us assume that.”  
  
Everybody then looked at Mike, who very largely and loudly said nothing.  
  
Buffy called back into her mind the image of Olaf’s huge, unsightly corpse. She could remember no evidence of a weapon. Olaf had been “done” by hand. Quietly, she said, “Mike, you have to tell us. We have to know what’s happened to know what to do.”  
  
“Don’t got to tell you nothing!” Mike burst out. “Don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing here, with you people. Don’t know how you’re apt to act. I got my own line to follow. I’ll listen here a little, if that’s what you want, because Spike sets value on you and I figure he’d want me to not cross you, go along with what you want some ways. But-- No.” He shook his head, setting the beer can away from him, to avoid bursting it with his hands. “No.”  
  
Looking around, Xander said, “Spike’s gone? Then who’s gonna approve the invoices?”  
  
“What invoices?” Buffy asked.  
  
“Never mind,” Xander said, retreating by stuffing his mouth with cheese puffs.  
  
Rising from the couch in her party finery, Lady Gates was suddenly natural with it, inhabiting it in a way she hadn’t before. Settling onto the floor by Mike, she brushed her hair back from her face in an automatic gesture, and Buffy realized it was Dawn. “Mike, do you trust me?”  
  
A silence while Mike considered her. “I guess,” he responded finally.  
  
“We have to find Spike. We have to get him out of this. I can’t promise that nothing bad will happen. But it won’t be your fault unless you try to take it on, all on your own. It will take all of us. Half the problem is that we all know a little but nobody knows it all. We’re all split up, divided. In Spike’s place, I’m telling you: tell us what you know and what you think. We need you for this.”  
  
Another long, considering silence. “All right.” After a moment, Mike added, “Does this mean you’re talking to me again?”  
  
“Guess so,” Dawn admitted, looking aside and twisting a pinch of her skirt.  
  
Mike nodded, then looked up at Buffy, calm and open-faced. “What do you want to know?”  
  
Somebody leaned on the doorbell.  
  
As the one nearest, Buffy said resignedly, “I’ll get that,” and yanked open the door. She stared: it was Giles--disheveled in an unbuttoned overcoat, unshaven, red-eyed, jet-lagged, hair standing up in crooked tufts as though he’d been plowing his fingers through it. “Giles,” she said blankly. “What are you doing here? Of course I’m glad to see you, but--”  
  
“Yes, quite,” Giles said curtly. “May I come in?”  
  
For a second, Buffy had the unnerving thought Giles had been turned. She seized his hand: warm. And of course: he was just Giles. A pull on his hand drew him inside. She let go to shut the door.  
  
Catching sight of Giles, Willow and Anya ran out to greet him, Willow offering to take his coat, Anya commenting gaily on how terrible he looked. Behind, in the arch, Xander silently proffered a beer.  
  
Giles ignored their greetings and attentions. “Never mind that,” he said, grim and direct. “Where’s Spike?”  
  
**********  
  
Mike knew who Giles was but hadn’t had much contact with him. So it was pure discovery and satisfaction to watch the man take charge, and all the rest fall into place: everybody knowing where they stood in relation to the others and what they were supposed to be doing. It was as though the Scoobies (as Spike sometimes called them) suddenly came into focus, became comprehensible. A missing center, returned, made sense of the rest.  
  
Not that Mike was a part of it. His only connection was to Dawn. But that was enough.  
  
She was being Lady Gates again at the moment, but that didn’t signify to Mike as much as it had. Dawn was close and knew all that went on; when she was the best one to deal with something, her immediacy and fire as compared to the Lady’s cool distance, then it was Dawn that was present. To him, she could be Dawn, and he suspected she didn’t know what it meant for him to say he trusted her. Or maybe she did. It would be nice if she did, knew what a huge exception he made for her, considering that he didn’t entirely trust Spike. Vamps weren’t particularly inclined to trust. Just not how it was.  
  
But she was being the Lady now to deal with Giles as one ancient to another and not have her young girl aspect mixing in and confusing things between them. Ancients didn’t need to explain much to one another: the right phrase or two, and they just _knew_.  
  
Just as Giles had clearly known, from that scrap of phoned conversation, that he had to come, and set down everything and got on a plane within a couple hours and came straight on until he was here. Go right at a thing, head on: Mike understood that.  
  
The Lady had sketched in the present lay of things, and the affront to her authority that Spike’s being taken was, in only a few words.  
  
Giles came back, sure and bitter, “Ethan is a fribble soul: he cares nothing for the Hellmouth. Returning to Sunnydale to reopen it, much less risking himself to do so, would never have occurred to him. He’s been put up to it. The potential for disruption is what would have appealed to him.”  
  
The Lady looked around at Mike sharply, as though he’d said something, but he hadn’t. “Mike, please set your watch aside.”  
  
Mike thought about that a minute, then slipped the watch from his pocket and laid it on the floor, still in easy reach.  
  
“What’s this,” she said, “about a severed hand?”  
  
“Something was down there,” Mike said, falling back into the comfortable habit of report--giving all the pertinent factors as concisely as possible. “Turned out, it was Spike, completely off his head. Said he was supposed to come up to give Dawn this ripped-off human hand, fresh, as a present. But he’d been putting it off. Fighting doing it. My going at him let him break it off, leave. He was pulled two ways about it,” Mike continued soberly. “Wanted to be here, yet didn’t. Wanted to see Dawn, give her something, but not that. Whatever was pushing at him--this Rayne, I guess--was going half the distance on what Spike wanted, himself. The rest, that was what Rayne wanted him to do.”  
  
The Lady reflected, “So some capacity to resist still remains. Control is not complete.”  
  
“It’s variable,” Giles commented bleakly, looking up as Buffy came in with a mug of strong tea on a tray for him. As she set it out, he continued, “Having a slave is no _fun_. Ethan only enjoys collecting pets: creatures capable of surprising and entertaining him. He enjoys their frustration and confusion. He…rewards them for it. Addiction, rather than outright enslavement. As far as I know, he’s never had a vampire for a pet before. They wouldn’t interest him: too simple; too direct. Too insensitive to magic. Whereas Spike….” Picking up the mug, Giles took a cautious sip.  
  
Buffy asked softly, “What’s he doing to Spike?”  
  
“Whatever he pleases. If it’s allowed to continue, not even the fact that he needs Spike to be reasonably coherent to manipulate the stone will matter. Ethan breaks his toys. And then discards them. He loses interest, walks away, leaving others to clean up his messes. Others would have to…dispose of whatever was left.” Giles met Buffy’s anxious eyes squarely. “Spike is formidable enough in himself. After Ethan was done with him, he would be wholly random. Wholly out of control. That…would have to be dealt with.”  
  
“No,” said Buffy. “No way!”  
  
The Lady said coolly, “Ending would be a kindness. So it must not be allowed to reach that point.”  
  
Willow, who’d been sent off to do a locator spell, came back downstairs carefully carrying a folded map, held level like a tray, and a small glass jar half full of red powder. She knelt down by Giles, showing him the map, commenting, “He’s not anyplace. Not here, not in the state, not in North America. I’d have to get some different maps to check anyplace else.”  
  
“No need,” said Lady Gates in a distant voice. “They’re dimension-hopping. Rayne is opening portals, perhaps to test out the stone and Spike’s ability to tune and focus it.”  
  
“What makes you think so?” Buffy challenged.  
  
“My dear, consider who I am,” said the Lady dryly. “When a portal is opened anywhere, it’s through me, and I know it. That is my nature and my power.” She looked to Giles. “Most cross-dimensional traffic is random and accidental. The interstices gape and close to accommodate the flexing of the space-time continuum, and sometimes things fall through. It’s not hard to open a portal and pass through if you don’t care where you end up. However, interdimensional motion to and from a fixed point is unusual, especially within a limited span of time. I should be able to locate them; and the next time they return, lock them down. But to do that, I need full access to my own resources.”  
  
Giles nodded politely. “I understand.”  
  
“Geezul Pete, I thought she’d never leave!” Dawn exclaimed, springing up and spinning around on her toes. Coming to a halt, she did a friendly little finger wave. “Hi, Giles.”  
  
“Hello, Dawn.”  
  
“How come you know all this about what Ethan Rayne wants, how he behaves, how he treats his pets?”  
  
“I’ve made something of a study of it,” Giles said, which wasn’t an answer but was plainly all he intended to say. “Is there any least chance of something resembling a sandwich?”  
  
“Baloney?” Buffy offered. “Or I could make baloney and peanut butter.”  
  
Giles shuddered. “If you must.” As Buffy headed for the kitchen, Giles asked, “Dawn, how long is the Lady apt to be?”  
  
Dawn made an open, airy gesture. “Could be an hour or a year.” Then she frowned and changed her mind. “Not long. Not considering Spike…. Willow, if she can lock them into this dimension, I guess the rest will be up to you: stopping whatever he tries until we can take Spike back. How will you do that? Have you ever faced a Chaos Mage?”  
  
“No,” Willow admitted. “I’ve never been in a full-scale wizard’s duel, and now that I think about it, I really don’t like the idea. Giles, can’t you--?”  
  
“I hold myself ready to assist,” Giles said, finishing the tea and setting the cup down. “However, Dawn is right--the actual opposition will fall to you, Willow. I can store a certain amount of power that you can draw upon.”  
  
“Me, too,” Dawn chimed in.  
  
“Are there rules?” Willow asked Giles worriedly. “Do you take turns? Where should I look to research this?”  
  
Collecting his watch and putting it away, Mike asked Dawn, “They done with me here?”  
  
She looked surprised and disappointed. “Don’t you want to stay and help?”  
  
“Got my own line on that and my own business to tend to. Don’t know much about magic except it smells bad, so there’s not a lot of help I’m apt to be with whatever you all will be doing.” Feeling extremely daring, he smoothed her hair down her cheek and patted her shoulder. “I expect I’ll get my oar in some way…. I’m real glad you’re talking to me again. I won’t never do what made you fall out with me before.” He smiled ruefully. “Find some new way to be dumb, most like.”  
  
“It’s hard, without a soul, to know where the limits are,” Dawn commented, which maybe was forgiveness. “Or even why there are any limits to begin with. If it’d been me you were taking pot-shots at, you would have held back, wondered if I’d be mad or truly hurt. But since it was Spike, you figured you knew. You just didn’t take me into account.”  
  
“I won’t never not take you into account again. Not on purpose. Except if I don’t know no better,” offered Mike humbly.  
  
She slipped fingers into his palm. “If you don’t have to go this minute, maybe you’d help me with my presents. I didn’t really have much chance to look at them, and I have to know what’s from who to write the thank-you notes.”  
  
“Oh, I’d bet you’d know, all by yourself,” Mike said, accepting being towed across the hall to the den by that fingertip touch. “For instance, guess who gave you a stock certificate.”  
  
“Just as long as one of ‘em isn’t a severed hand. I think that would be pretty major industrial-strength ick.”  
  
“He didn’t want to,” Mike said earnestly, as Dawn seated herself by the scatter of open presents and wrapping paper. “He was trying his best not to.”  
  
“Yeah, one thing Spike isn’t is a practical joker. So we’re spared that, at least.” Lips pursed and face solemn and intent, Dawn took up the small glass dragon carefully by the back and set it in her open palm. Not looking up, she commented, “I guess I know who gave me this.”  
  
“Expect you do. Sort of like giving you a snowflake: you know it’s not gonna last. Don’t you be upset if it gets busted--it’s just for now, to remember. Not to keep. It’s not strong that way, to last.”  
  
“Maybe it could,” Dawn argued. “Maybe it will. It’s a dragon, after all, and I found out the hard way that no matter how delicate they look, they’re really strong and fierce and dangerous!”  
  
“Won’t dispute it with you. If anybody would know, it’d be you. Just didn’t want you to expect of it anything it didn’t have in it, to give. Didn’t want to give you something you’d feel responsible for…or something that would ever make you sad.”  
  
“And aren’t we all about the subtext tonight!” Dawn set the dragon down on an open part of the table and looked up at him brightly. Then her expression shifted to curious, pensive. “Or maybe not. Maybe the text is all there is, and it’s not fair to read more into it. OK: who gave me this spectacularly ugly scarf?” She held it up with two fingers as though it were a dead rat.  
  
“That was from Janice.”  
  
“I always suspected Janice was colorblind. So that’s two accounted for. How about the earrings?”  
  
“That was Harris.”  
  
Mike had been gradually circling the table, pushing chairs in to get by, and had now arrived at Dawn’s side, at her right hand, as she continued to inventory the presents. He breathed her scent, that rose to him. She smelled exactly like herself, and that was part of how her eyes flashed, amused, wary, and curious, when she glanced at him, and part of how her fingers grasped things, all precise, like calipers. Part of the odd angle her elbow made, lifted a little away from her, when she reached. Part of the solemn part in her hair, right down the center, and the smooth curve of forehead and the hair so silken and soft to either side, falling from there past her shoulders.  
  
Doing his own inventory, Mike found all as it should be. He touched her hair, at the back of her neck. If she felt the touch she didn’t object, which probably was all that mattered.  
  
**********  
  
Taking the bike, Mike was back at the factory within fifteen minutes. Checking with Huey, he found all as it should be: the fledges who’d been digging were drunk and unconscious. Mike was under orders to dispose of them. But he’d thought about that on the way back and come to a different decision.  
  
“Lock ‘em down,” he told Huey, “and let ‘em be. You keep watch. Nobody comes in or goes out except I say so.”  
  
“Spike said--”  
  
“Spike ain’t here. Till he is, you go by my word. You too, Emil,” Mike added over his shoulder. “A straight matter of stand up, or stand down. You want to try me on?”  
  
Emil, as big as Mike and a good deal older, lifted both hands, taking himself out of contention. “What you call is fine by me. No objection here.”  
  
Mike switched his attention to Huey, who plainly wasn’t happy with the situation and was even older than Emil. Huey responded bluntly, “Don’t like it. Don’t think you’re up to being in charge. Spike never named you second, not in so many words. But he did name you his get, and he’s been using you for lead, most times, so I guess it’ll have to do. You answer for it, though.”  
  
“I will,” Mike agreed. “If Spike wants to take it out of my hide later, then that’s how it will be. In the meantime, I have the call. Let the fledges sleep it off. Huey, you double check everything Spike had going, make sure it’s running right, they’re not waiting for something from us to go ahead. If they do, and it’s money, Slayer, she has the same rights over the account as Spike does. She’ll see to it. If you find any like that, make a list. I’ll deal with her. Anybody Spike was supposed to meet with, put ‘em off, say we’ll get back to ‘em. Don’t give no reason. As far as anybody else goes, Spike’s here and nobody knows any different. Nobody knows his business or has any right to. Except the Slayer, and I’ll deal with her however’s needed.”  
  
It occurred to Mike that more than Huey and Emil needed to know this. So he sent Emil to gather up the crew while he and Huey split up contacting the SITs. Spike had always included them, so Mike would do the same. Whether or not they chose to go along, that was up to them.  
  
Since Amanda was the one always least eager, most likely to pull out, Mike did that call himself. When he’d got through a layer of parents and a younger brother and actually was talking to her direct, he said, “’Manda, it’s Mike. We’re having a thing tonight. Has to do with Spike. I’m briefing on it in fifteen. If you’re coming, you be here. Yeah: at the factory.” Without waiting for any answer, Mike ended that call and hit the number for Kennedy, but only got the machine she and Rona shared at the boarding house. He left pretty much the same message for them there and figured his duty toward them was done. Either they’d show, or they wouldn’t, and Mike didn’t much care which.  
  
Wanted to play it, as far as he could, the way he thought Spike would have wanted but wasn’t gonna let himself be hamstrung by that neither.  
  
He hadn’t fed yet today, and that was all right. He figured it gave him a bit of an edge, and he might well need that.  
  
Emil had rousted out what of the crew still happened to be around: fifteen fighters, not counting Huey or Emil. Three short. Probably off helling around, hunting. Mike would give them a lesson about what “on call” meant, next chance he got.  
  
“All right,” he said, surveying them. “Spike’s been taken, and we’re gonna take him back. Nobody says a word about it, outside. I’ll personally dust anybody who--”  
  
Mary interrupted grimly, “Digger?”  
  
“Don’t think so. Not directly. Though he may send back-up, and if he does, we take them out. Not a one gets through. And if he does, we’ll know and settle up for it later. The one we know about is that he-witch I’ve had you tracking, the last couple of nights. Huey and Emil, they're minding the store. Gonna split the rest in half. One bunch, check out everyplace we’ve found so far where he’s been lairing. If they’re all empty, the mark is the freshest one found, that big place on Crawford. If he’s gone back to one of the others, and you get fresh trace, call and tell Huey and he’ll relay to me.”  
  
A new fighter, called himself Fury, piped up, “Don’t have enough phones.” Len, still intent on getting above himself, smacked him before Mike did, pointing out that there were public call boxes on nearly every corner. Fury backed off. So that was settled.  
  
“It’s possible,” Mike resumed, “but not likely, you may run across Spike himself, or his trace. If you do, take him down and hold him. He’s off his head.” He saw several vamps shaking their heads or otherwise looking real unwilling to take Spike on, crazy or not. Mike reconsidered. “All right, do this instead. You come on him, you shadow along and send word, like I said before. Don’t think it’ll happen, but if it does, that’s what you do. All right?”  
  
Len asked, “What’ll the other half be doing?”  
  
“Some to lay an ambush, a little away from the mark, for any back-up Digger sends. The rest, I have another errand for. Julia, you lead off checking the lairs--you get four, besides yourself. Choose ‘em out. Len, you lead off on the ambush. You get five. The rest are with me, to run my errand. Ford, bring the car around.”  
  
Everybody looked, because there was hammering on the outside door. Emil went off to check and returned with Amanda and Rona, in street clothes: they hadn’t even taken time to change into the colors.  
  
Scowling, Rona called, “This better be good!”  
  
Spike always allowed the SITs a lot of latitude, didn’t slap ‘em down for mouthing off to him, so Mike put up with it too. For now.  
  
“You heard from the Slayer?” he asked.  
  
Amanda shook her head, and Rona said, “Not a peep, at least that I know of.”  
  
“You’re with me, then.”  
  
Hands on hips, Rona demanded, “What’s with Spike?”  
  
“Tell you later,” Mike decided.  
  
“But it ain’t even fifteen minutes yet!”  
  
“I lied. Len, take two more on the ambush. SITs are with me. We'll hook up with you later." Looking around, he asked, "You got your tasers?”  
  
“What do you think we are: stupid?” Rona came back at him.  
  
“Maybe. You’re not wearing the smell. So you’d best stick close,” Mike commented, heading for the door. The pair not chosen out by the leads he’d named knew enough to follow. Which gave him four, besides himself. Plenty enough for the errand he had in mind.  
  
When they’d all piled into the ancient, sagging car, Mike directed, “Casa Mike.”  
  
Except for the SITs, none of them was armed. That was how Spike liked it. Kept the fighting pretty even, everything hanging on the balance of strength, skill, and ferocity. Mike, he’d always thought a different way.  
  
It was his incendiaries that’d taken out most of the Turok-han. He was, by training and inclination, a sniper, even though that was from the before. Mike liked the odds in his favor and liked the things that modern weaponry could do. With no present need, he’d moved his small armory to the basement of Casa Mike and added to it any time the chance to acquire good ordnance on the cheap presented itself.  
  
Fuck magic. Mike was a hell of a lot more comfortable with an M-16 firing .50 caliber armor-piercing rounds. Take a vamp’s head right off or blow a hole in its chest big enough to stick your fist into, except of course they’d dust first. Plastique, if there was leisure to place a few shaped charges. Some incendiary grenades. Against vamps, even highway flares could be good weapons, and he had those in quantity. See how Digger liked them apples, not to mention that bastard, Ethan Rayne. Mike had something extra special in mind for him.  
  
Let the Slayer take the inside and do him if she could, her and the witch. But if he got past them, if he came outside and tried to get clear, Mike would blow that fucker into confetti. Then see what kind of magic he could do.  
  
**********  
  
Dawn was pleased not to have to fight about going along, even though it was because of the Lady. It was the Lady who’d determined what Rayne’s go-back-to point was: the mansion on Crawford, that had been Angel’s (as much as it was anybody’s: Dawn doubted Angel had ever held title). Spike would know its advantages of defensibility and isolation, so Rayne had chosen it for a base.  
  
And without Dawn as conduit, the Lady wouldn’t have the eyes and ears she needed to follow what was going on while retaining access to her own powers.  
  
It made Dawn feel a bit like a hole in the air, everybody looking past her, beyond her, or through her, but better to be in charge of her own body than be a helpless bystander as she’d been since the Lady had decided to usurp her and take up residence.  
  
But not everybody looked through her: Mike hadn’t. And he knew for certain, instantly, whether it was her driving, or the Lady, even when she hadn’t said a word or twitched so much as a finger. Smell, maybe. Anyway, he knew, and that was a good counterbalance to Dawn’s bouts of suspecting that she wasn’t really real, the way Buffy was, or Xander, or Willow. That she was just a fiction everybody had tacitly agreed on, not an actual person in her own right. A dimensional key: just like the sodding Chaos Stone, that nobody could ever mistake for a person.  
  
A tool; an open door; a hole in the air.  
  
Since her displacement, her confidence in her own reality was pretty much at an all-time low. She wished Mike had stayed. Or that Spike was here, where he should be. They’d all forgotten her once, and that had been scary and horrible. Everybody except Spike, who’d slowly forced them all to remember or at least accept that he did. Spike had held on.  
  
Now she figured it was her turn. If not feeling quite real was the price of catching hold of Spike and hauling him back to a safe shore, then she didn’t grudge it, or the Lady’s voice periodically muttering in the back of her mind, wanting to know this, or wanting her to say that: not in residence, but not absent, either. When real people had voices talking to them in their heads, they were crazy…or occasionally telepaths. But Dawn was neither. She wasn’t 100% sure, anymore, what she was. That scared her.  
  
Buffy accepted her, loved her; but Buffy had forgotten like the rest and didn’t worry about ridiculous things like not being real.  
  
But Dawn’s connection to Spike, that was bedrock. They’d sometimes get fed up with each other and go off like rockets, but those times were just the passing storms that punctuated weather.  
  
If it was her turn to hold on, she certain sure wasn’t letting go. Whatever that came to entail.  
  
Right now it entailed having the Front Seat of Honor between Buffy, driving, and Giles, trying hard not to watch her drive. Willow and Xander were in the middle seat, Willow anxiously researching in a big book laid across her lap, Xander helpfully holding a flashlight for her. Anya had claimed other business. Kennedy was in the back.  
  
They hadn’t been able to reach Rona, but Amanda’s mom said there’d been a call for ‘Manda and she’d gone out, the mom mildly concerned that it was a school night and now past nine. Dawn had learned long since that ‘Manda had somehow ended up with all the guts in that family: all the rest were wispy, indecisive doofuses. Doofi? Anyway, from that, there seemed a good chance they were with Mike--maybe for tonight's sweep, on the principle that with Spike or without, the show had to go on, right?  
  
Willow was ticked because she’d hoped to have all three SITs for an energy drain, via Giles. Dawn privately thought that was idiotic, just nervousness, since through Dawn Willow had one of the Powers of the universe to draw on. Maybe Lady Gates’ power tasted funny or something. Or maybe Willow was afraid of it--like it would be too much, more than Willow could handle without going black-eyed and veiny-faced.  
  
Turning and kneeling on the seat--no seat belt constraining the middle position--Dawn inquired buoyantly, “What if it’s a trap?”  
  
Looking, wide-eyed, up from her spell book, Willow exploded, “Geez, Dawn, be a little depressing, why don’t you?”  
  
“Well, it could be,” Dawn argued reasonably. “Maybe he doesn’t really want Spike at all, or much, and Spike’s just bait to bring you into it. Or Buffy. I’m sure Digger would love a chance to get rid of Spike and the Slayer at one go. Then he could do whatever he pleased.”  
  
Giles said flatly, “It’s not a ruse. Ethan needs Spike to manipulate the Chaos Stone. Or at least not primarily a ruse…. A valid point. Buffy?”  
  
Facing straight front, Buffy said, “Get in, get Spike, get out. How’s that for a plan?”  
  
Dawn looked back and forth between them like a tennis match.  
  
“Perhaps slightly lacking in subtlety,” Giles commented mildly. “Might an initial reconnaissance be in order?”  
  
“You just don’t want to go back to the mansion,” Buffy charged.  
  
“It’s not among my favorite places, no. But that’s of no consequence. I didn’t come several thousand miles to stop short a few meters from the goal. If you can face the unpleasant memories embedded in that place, I can certainly do the same. Dawn, explain to me about Mike, please. On the phone, he identified Spike as his sire. At first, I assumed that meant Spike was hunting again, and Mike was some unfortunate he’d turned. But now that I’ve met him, I know that’s not the case. He’s not a stupid fledge, overwhelmed with the change. I gather he occupies a position of some authority and responsibility within Spike’s developing court. So in what way can he regard Spike as his sire?”  
  
Accepting the blatant change of topic, Dawn slid back down on the bench seat. “Angelus turned him, about six years ago.”  
  
“Ah, yes: the demonstration. Now I recollect where I’ve seen him before. Persuading Angel that there is actual inheritance through the demon, and the same demon is transferred in the turning. I’ve produced some preliminary notes on the subject; when there’s time, I’d like to do a full-scale monograph for the Council journal. Privately circulated, of course, but quite prestigious in certain circles. It is, to put it mildly, a revolutionary concept: nothing along those lines has ever been suggested, much less documented. So _that’s_ the Michael concerned, that I’ve written several reams about. How embarrassing, not to have recognized him. I hope I didn’t offend him, not greeting him properly.”  
  
“Mike’s different,” Dawn responded, thinking it out. “He’s just on the edge of becoming a mature vamp. So he acts different and probably looks different--sharper, quicker, more confident than even a few months ago. Not looking, every minute, for somebody to tell him what to do…or not do. Standing his ground. Taking calculated risks, not just diving in blind. It’s no big deal, your not knowing him, Giles. Hardly anybody bothers to tell one vamp from another. Except for Spike. He won’t tolerate being ignored. Mike, he’s cool with it.”  
  
She wished Buffy had accepted her suggestion to let Mike know Rayne had chosen the mansion as a base, to call him into it. But to Buffy, the idea of vamps as back-up (any that weren't Spike) wasn't worth considering.  
  
Now that she no longer had to be officially mad at him, Dawn would have felt better if Mike was along. And she knew that nobody, not even Buffy, would be more determined to get Spike out in one piece than Mike. Sometimes somebody utterly single-minded and way dangerous was very comforting to have on your side. But Buffy wouldn't hear of it and the Slayer was nothing if not stubborn and bossy.  
  
“Which still doesn’t explain why he’d claim to be Spike’s get,” Giles pointed out. “True, he’d be of the Aurelian bloodline….”  
  
“It was Spike who claimed him,” Dawn replied. “Publicly. And if Spike says, and Mike agrees, who’s gonna argue with them?”  
  
“Still another…connection of Angel’s that Spike’s inherited, then. He seems to make rather a habit of it.”  
  
They both waited, but Buffy was attending strictly to the driving and offered no comment.  
  
Giles continued, “I thought my mild sense of deja vu was merely because….”  
  
“Because he looks as though he could be Riley Finn’s cousin,” Dawn supplied accurately. “Buffy thought so, too. Spike puts it down to something he calls ‘the Wild Geese syndrome.’ Mike was a soldier and then a mercenary, in the before. And then Riley, with the Initiative.”  
  
“Yes, I see. Hired violence: Ireland’s chief export, for centuries. He’s become Spike’s enforcer, then?”  
  
“Spike is his own enforcer.”  
  
“Yes, quite.”  
  
“What’s Ethan doing to him?” Dawn asked, echoing Buffy’s earlier question.  
  
Giles sighed and bowed his head. In a voice as distant and cold as stars, he replied, “Bewitching him. It’s what he does. Until he grows bored, or his…pet successfully defies him.”  
  
There was subtext there. Giles probably didn’t think Dawn could hear it, but she did. She wondered, _Did you defy him? Or did he just get bored and indifferent, and let you leave? And are you entirely sure which?_ But with new tact that maybe was part of turning seventeen, she didn’t ask.  
  
Buffy braked the SUV, set the hand brake, and turned the key. “We’re here. Or close, anyway. Per the plan of our master strategists, I’ll go have a look around. Willow, you get charged up, or whatever you do. Then we’ll go in.”  
  
Everybody got out. Buffy retrieved her favorite sword and a bag of stakes from the back, then vanished into the adjoining park. Holding hands, Giles and Willow began chanting quietly on the sidewalk. Presently each held out a hand: Willow to Xander, and Giles to Kennedy, who looked decidedly nervous and not all that eager to hold hands with two guys. Because after a minute or so, Xander and Ken were directed to make contact, completing the circle. The air around them seemed to thicken like lemon Jell-O with chopped carrots, except the carrot bits were wandering sparks.  
  
Dawn mooched off down the block, because she wasn’t a direct part of any of it. She didn’t scout; she didn’t do magic. She was only the vehicle and the vessel for the Lady, who well might do both. Though probably not: the Lady didn’t think Spike could survive, caught in the middle of a direct confrontation between a Chaos Mage and one of the Powers. Sure, the Lady could likely squash Rayne like a bug. But not without squashing Spike, too, because of the connection there. And the Powers mostly didn’t squash people like bugs--it wasn’t their style. They watched, and hung back, and debated endlessly, involved but not concerned.  
  
If they decided to act, it was by pushing, and nagging, and bringing intangible pressures to bear to edge events in one direction or the other, generally so glacially slowly that nobody would notice anything had moved until a couple of centuries afterward, if at all. As bad as Ents for godawful slow. Except sometimes, when something they considered important had come to crisis sooner than they’d expected. Then they’d choose an Instrument or a Champion and shove him headlong into the middle of it. Whether he wanted to or not. Whether he survived it or not. Whether it entirely fucked up the rest of his life or not. As long as their purpose was achieved, what did they care?  
  
(The Lady imparted, “You misvalue the long view; through you, we’ve gained some appreciation for the short term and the immediate. Both have their wisdoms.”)  
  
Dawn shot back rancorously, “Fuck the wisdoms. Spike is crazy again, and hurting, and you don’t give a single damn.”  
  
(“If he can be spared, he will be spared. And you are spared knowing what a wretched, self-centered, sybaritic, sadistic reptile this Rayne is. If you would be a child forever, you’ll be spared such things. Cherish your innocence: it comes at a price others pay, that you may have this luxury. Be grateful. Now hush and don’t interrupt me. I’m tying a dimensional knot.”)  
  
Dawn stuck out her tongue and rancorously kicked a stone. Then she patted her overalls pocket, where her taser was. At least maybe she could fight. Hard to ignore somebody zapping you in the ghoolies. That would give her great satisfaction.  
  
**********  
  
Buffy gave the mansion a cursory once-around because Giles thought she should. She didn’t expect to see anything, and she didn’t.  
  
The chimney breathed smoke. It was a cool evening: the mage had lit a cozy fire in the fireplace. How nice.  
  
At least it was confirmation that Rayne was resting after the day’s dimension-hopping exertions. In place and now locked in, thanks to the Lady’s closing the ways against him.  
  
Once, Buffy had known the mansion so well. Every dip in the ground, every vista through the trees, all of it golden and dreamlike. Now the ground was ankle-deep in fallen leaves and untended, forlorn. Dropping down from the retaining wall, she was in the paved pocket garden where she’d had her final fight with Angelus. Its fountain was dry and clogged with slimy leaves. All the riot of flowers were dead brittle stems. Angel had literally courted the light, she recalled: trimmed away branches to let it shine at noon into this little sunken court so he could gaze at it from a safe distance out the window. Enough to keep the flowers alive….  
  
She’d been driven back against the wall, just there. Against Angelus’ hateful jeering that she’d lost everything and had nothing left, she’d found herself declaring that she had herself and catching the sword blade between her two hands. The fight had turned then, on that realization.  
  
Then, being alone and knowing it had been a strength. With only herself on the line, all fights were simple, although she’d lost a few along the way. Died a couple of times. Not until Spike had she ever truly let anyone into her essential Slayer solitude. Her friends, they helped, sure. But when push came to shove, she was the one in the lead and on the line. They were concerned but not committed--they could walk away anytime. Like Oz had. Like Angel had. Like even Willow and Xander had, after a fashion. Unavailable to her, anyway.  
  
Not Spike, though. Spike stayed--even when she hadn’t wanted him to. Like candle lighting candle, he took his purpose from hers and was right out there on the line along with her unless she forced him away, refused him completely. Once, she’d actually succeeded in driving him away, and she’d thought he was gone for good: when he’d been off winning the soul. It had been a bitter satisfaction.  
  
And then, despite everything, he’d come back. Crazy, filthy, starving, frightened, helpless, a whirlwind of confusion. A burden and a responsibility, not a help. Not at first. Except that just the fact of him made her know she wasn’t alone. Couldn’t be, even when she wanted to. She was half of a wacky set, all crooked edges and sharp points, and she’d finally resigned herself to that. It’d been a while longer before she’d taken any joy from the connection; any peace; any love. But they’d been there for her all along, if she’d only had the eyes to see and the grace to accept.  
  
Love was finally such a little word, such a Hallmark sentiment, for what Spike was to her now.  
  
So all breath was driven from her body when she looked in the window and saw them there, by the fire: Rayne, with his neat, dry, creased, quizzical face and flying dark eyebrows, like he knew a naughty secret and was gonna inflict it on you, sitting across Angel’s big wood chair, one leg thrown over the arm padding, back propped at crooked ease into the corner, looking down and laughing, all lazy gaiety. Laughing back at him was Spike, stretched out on the carpet like a great pale cat; eyes wide and wild and drawn oblong with liner, like an odalisque’s; all smooth power in repose, his torso painted with chocolate shadows and tangerine highlights by the flames and shining beyond that: oiled, sleek, leaned easily on a bent arm, hand propping his tilted head.  
  
Rayne was feeding him something--offering, then drawing away, happily teasing and playful. The faint blush on Spike’s skin meant he’d already fed well and to his satisfaction.  
  
Around Spike’s neck was a broad black leather collar dotted with steel studs. The match to his watchband and to his belt. Very decorative. Very deliberate.  
  
Buffy wrenched away and threw up into the dry fountain.  
  
Spike would hear. Couldn’t be helped.  
  
She took the wall at a bound, still fighting the impulse to heave.  
  
She’d visualized something like his captivity by the First: chains; bruises; wounds. Not luxurious collared ease. Nothing like this. Nothing she’d ever imagined.  
  
She ran, practically headlong, into Giles. Until he offered her his handkerchief, she didn’t realize she was crying, and ducked her head and let herself be walked away a little distance from the others, all standing by the SUV and staring at her.  
  
“Buffy, what is it?” Giles asked her with all the quiet and concern she so conspicuously lacked. That she’d missed so terribly, but couldn’t say so because Giles was a grown-up and had his own life, and rebuilding the Council and monographs on Mike and yada yada.  
  
She clutched his lapels and sobbed. She was the Slayer. She was allowed.  
  
“My dear child. What has he done?”  
  
“I think maybe,” (Buffy blew her nose explosively, then scrubbed at her eyes: wrong order, didn’t care) “we should just leave it, OK? Lady Gates is this big Power, why can’t she just shut off the Hellmouth, too? Why does she need Spike to stop it? Why can’t she just let him alone and…and let him just be happy? He looked happy, Giles. And if he can be, why not just let him be? Why do I have to jump in and ruin everything?”  
  
“Buffy.” Giles patiently teased the handkerchief out of her fist and presented her with another from a hip pocket. She imagined him producing an endless stream of handkerchiefs like a magician pulling scarves out of people’s noses, which was gross and not at all magical. She was giggling and sobbing at the same time. “Buffy, it’s an enchantment. A spell. You’ve been bespelled yourself, a time or two--remember? While it lasts, it’s utterly convincing. You can’t see past it or around it. It simply _is_. Which is among the reasons why I came. Age sometimes grants perspective, Anya aside.” He waited for her to notice his small, pursed smile.  
  
“But…he looked happy. And strange. And…not mine,” she blurted.  
  
“Would Spike, of his own volition, ever deliver to Dawn a severed human hand?”  
  
“No,” Buffy admitted.  
  
“He has no choice, or very little, in what he does, how he seems. We all have monsters within that can be teased out, flattered into complaisance…captured, for a time. Spike’s is merely more accessible. Closer to the surface, unsouled as he is. And unsouled as he is, he has nothing that can withstand such beguilement. It would be most unfair to judge him by what he cannot help and can’t control. What’s been imposed on him by another. Give any of us what we believe to be our heart’s desire, even if it’s a complete fraud, and there are few of us who could resist being ensnared. In that place, Drusilla came to me as Jenny and I told her at once what I’d endured torture rather than reveal. Don’t judge him, Buffy.”  
  
“But…there was oil. And a frickin’ collar!”  
  
“That’s right: be angry. We must go and do this now. Spike is helpless, and in prison, even though the walls may not be visible to us. We cannot leave him there. For his sake, and for ours. When the spell is lifted, you’ll see things more clearly, more truly. Wipe your eyes. It’s time.”  
  
**********  
  
Dawn was nervous, going to confront whatever had freaked Buffy so totally. Buffy, all grim and furious, wouldn’t talk about it, just led off down the sidewalk. Spell book at last set aside, Willow trotted after, and Giles, and Dawn last, glancing at shadows, clutching her taser.  
  
After feebly protesting, Xander and Kennedy were tucked, fast asleep, in the back of the locked SUV. Drained of vitality, they weren’t up to much. So it was just the four of them.  
  
A ruckus started up in the park, off to the right, out of sight. Buffy’s head whipped around, but she just went faster. They all broke into a run.  
  
Following Buffy, they were headed straight for the front door: real subtle, Dawn thought. Maybe it was locked. Didn’t really matter, because Buffy tucked her sword under her arm, grabbed the ornate looped opener thingy two-handed, and hauled the door off its hinges, bang, and pitched it into the yard. Buffy tended to do things like that.  
  
(“Stand ready,” directed the Lady’s cool intention, within her.)  
  
Yeah, right. Ready for _what?_  
  
What came off was the door. What came out was about half a dozen vamps, snarling and stinky. Buffy went high, with the sword. Dawn went low, with the taser. Willow dithered and Giles economically took out the vamps Dawn had downed, with stakes produced from his deep overcoat pockets. There was a lot of dust. They went inside.  
  
“Why, Ripper!” somebody caroled from out of sight. “What a surprise! Sorry, must dash. Things to subvert, people to do.”  
  
It was something Spike said, slightly skewed. Suddenly Dawn was hot with indignation.  
  
Giles replied coolly, “I think you may find that difficult, Ethan. You have something of ours. We want it back.”  
  
Sidling in behind, Dawn found herself in a large, paneled room. Across from the door, to her left now, there was a fireplace with a fire burning in it. Behind her she’d noticed another door, smaller, with a window to either side. Everything was old and dusty. Moths had been feasting on the carpet. A big padded wooden chair by the fire had been overset, trailing scraps of canvas lining. Everything smelled like dust, mildew, and mice. If the house wasn’t haunted, it should have been.  
  
The Chaos Mage, Ethan Rayne, was a skinny, unprepossessing guy in grey suit pants, a blue shirt, and what Dawn thought was called a smoking jacket--kind of a short robe with red plush panels at the shoulders. Pretty much backed up against the far wall, in front of a ratty looking but ornate couch with curved legs and lion paw feet. Grinning broadly, as though this eruption into his Vincent Price living room was the most delightful thing he could imagine.  
  
Yeah, right. Sure.  
  
Crouched beside him was Spike: bare-chested, in some outfit that made him look like a circus performer in search of a trapeze. Black, of course, and shiny. All greased up, as though for a Turkish wrestling match, like the one in _Topkapi_ , except none of the wrestlers had worn a big black studded collar, that Dawn recalled. Absolutely Spike’s style: she wondered if he’d gotten it at _skins_ , at the mall, where they’d found the belt to match the watch band. Of the watch he wasn’t wearing.  
  
That was when she noticed both arms were the same: the tattoo, _her_ verse, the poetry that meant _Dawn_ was gone. She was so shocked she almost barged right past except the Lady told her the field had to be secured, or some crap like that, and she only rocked against Giles’ back for a second. Lucky she didn’t have her finger on the taser trigger.  
  
Now that she was freaked, Buffy was calm. “We’ve come for Spike.”  
  
“The Slayer, come to reclaim her pet--how touching. But what if he chooses not to go?” Rayne laid spread fingers on Spike’s shoulder, his grin gone a little rigid. “Now would be a good time, dear boy.”  
  
Spike flashed to game face yet somehow looked no different. He hadn’t said a word or shown any sign of recognizing them, or understanding that this was supposed to be a rescue. Both his arms were braced forward, and his hands were set on a chunk of rock: presumably the fabled Chaos Stone. Otherwise known as the ugly chunk of rock that was doing absolutely nothing whatever.  
  
(“Of course not,” the Lady contributed to the general sense of everybody being strange and off-balance. Profoundly _off_. “Be prepared to stand aside.”)  
  
Spike bent crooked and flinched: Rayne was hurting him.  
  
Taking Willow’s hand, Giles said, “The ways have been shut. Release Spike and you can go where you will.”  
  
The whole room went strange then in a way Dawn could only see, not describe. It _wavered_. It seemed new and rich, and tatty and old, each shading into the other. Then it seemed like a mouth about to bite down with big black teeth. Dark snapped like a burnt-out bulb, then flickered. Willow and Giles were doing the yellow Jell-O thing, and Willow had one arm extended, fingers spread, in a sort of _stop_ gesture. She was muttering and sometimes shouting in some language Dawn had yet to acquire and the Lady didn’t bother interpreting for her. In one of the flickering moments, Dawn saw that although the contest was presumably between Rayne and Willow, he and Giles were the ones looking at one another with a terrible sadness.  
  
Then she was shoved aside, within herself, but still enough present to feel her hand go out and fling something invisible, hot, and tingly. She seemed to have thrown it at Spike, since he cried out a vowel sound and collapsed, curling into himself and making a keening noise, rocking and trying to curl tighter still.  
  
He’d fallen away from the stone. The black smacked down like a blown fuse and then was gone. The room was its tatty self again, and Willow was crying and leaning into Giles’ supporting arms. The stone was gone. And so was Ethan Rayne.  
  
(“Not interdimensional,” observed the Lady in a vexed tone of mind. “Teleported. The wretch must have had a retrieval spell set on himself, ready to be triggered. Devious. At least he was unable to take Spike with him.”)  
  
Buffy had dropped the sword and was down on her knees next to Spike, trying to get him to uncurl. He wouldn’t, twisting away from her, wrapping arms over and around his head, dragging back whatever she tried to ease straight, still making that noise. Still suffering.  
  
Dawn dazedly figured out she was back at the wheel again and demanded, “What did you _do?_ ”  
  
Her sense of the Lady was distant now: retreating. (“He entrusted you with it. It was therefore symmetrical he receive it again from your hand. We have returned his soul to him. That in turn allowed him to choose. He has chosen.”)  
  
Sitting back on her heels, Buffy was holding up both hands, shiny with whatever grease or oil Spike’s skin was covered with. Looking up at Giles in surprised distress, she announced, “It burns.”


	13. Connection

“It’s like double super-strength Ben-Gay or something!” Buffy told Giles, scrubbing her hands futilely on the bottom of her jacket as Giles, carefully not touching, contemplated the logistics of getting Spike, who wouldn’t uncurl and was covered in the stuff, from the floor to the car. “Willow--is there a spell? Something?”  
  
As Willow responded with a wincy-faced lip bite, Dawn held up a finger and in a TA-DA voice, specified, “The Official Designated Tatty Emergency Blanket! Keys?”  
  
Buffy pitched them to her and she raced off.  
  
“Will?” Buffy appealed again. It wasn’t the uber-stinging oil so much as that Spike wasn’t responding. To the rescue. To her. He was out there someplace inside his head and she literally couldn’t touch him and that was driving her spare (she thought that was the phrase). Playing harpsichord on her last nerve. Driving her totally around the bend. She could feel more tears welling and she _hated_ that, _hated_ that, and Giles would eventually run out of handkerchiefs and then the world would end.  
  
With a helpless gesture, Willow said, “He’s so all…stunk up with magic, I don’t dare, since I don’t know what it is.”  
  
Frowning thoughtfully, Giles set spread fingers on an uncovered part of Spike’s face and said a Word. Glancing up, he commented, “He’s asleep now. We can deal with the rest later.”  
  
As Giles began to rise, Dawn came back with her arms full of blanket, announcing with proud casualness that she’d brought the SUV right up to the door. Though Buffy gave her a dire look, unlicensed teens manhandling SUVs over curbs was low priority and Buffy let it go. They laid out the blanket. Then Buffy pushed Spike onto it and rolled him up, conspicuously with no help from anybody. Giles was vexedly scrubbing at his fingers with another handkerchief and Willow took care to stay well clear. But once Spike was wrapped and non-contaminant, Giles consented to take the legs while Buffy took the head end, and they toted their awkward burden out the empty doorway.  
  
Where they found their way barred by Mike, a bunch of vamps in the colors, and the other two SITs, the SITs pushing forward and asking anxiously if Spike was dead--nonsensically since (1) he was already, always dead (2) if he _had_ been, what was left of him could have been put in a teacup and wouldn’t have to be lugged around like a roll of carpet. Tucking Spike’s legs under one arm, Giles fended the girls off, explaining, “You don’t want to touch him: it rather stings.”  
  
Gazing calmly past them, Mike said, “We can take it from here.”  
  
Buffy quickly let her end of the carpet-roll down, then exploded, “I’m not gonna argue goddam jurisdiction with you! He’s _mine!_ Now get the hell out of my way!”  
  
“Mike,” Willow intervened, “there’s magic. And things. We have to take him home. And don’t you have a sweep or something to see to?”  
  
Bending, taking up the whole roll in his arms (which Buffy could have perfectly well done herself, but Giles had wanted to help and Spike would have absolutely hated her doing that), Mike replied, “Thursday. No sweep.” Looking around to the other vamps, he added, “Lockdown at the factory till sunrise: Digger may not like what we done. Tell Huey he’s lead till I get back. Or Spike does.” Then he stepped back, waiting for somebody to open up the SUV.  
  
Buffy glared. But rather than have a stupid snatching match over it, with Spike in the middle, she stomped off to the far side of the SUV, triggered all the doors, and waited, fuming, behind the wheel until everybody got themselves in. Then she shoved the SUV roughly into gear. The vehicle’s wheels tore up the yard--she had to turn, and back (crunching over the flung door), and turn, dodging a tree that had no right to be there--then bump-thumped down the curb.  
  
In the back, Dawn asked, “Was that you? In the park?”  
  
Mike’s voice replied softly, “I guess.”  
  
“What was it?”  
  
“Couple-few of Digger’s crew, sent to mix things up.”  
  
“How did you know to come? Were you following?”  
  
“Got my own ways. Slayer, she do for that Rayne?”  
  
“No. He poofed. Teleported.”  
  
A chuckle from Mike. “Poofed. I guess so. Get another crack at him, then.”  
  
Dawn blurted anxiously, “Don’t unwrap him! He’s all burny or something!”  
  
“Know that.”  
  
“Oh, right. In the basement. Yeah. Doesn’t…doesn’t it burn you, too?”  
  
“Doesn’t signify. Washes off.” After a minute, Mike added, “Can barely smell him, for the stink of the magic on him. He smells hurt, though.”  
  
“It’s fairly ick, smelling him like that,” Dawn mentioned delicately.  
  
“Don’t need your say-so. Not doing you no harm. He get hit with something?”  
  
“Not that I saw, but it was dark. Except for his soul, of course.”  
  
Buffy avoided plowing into a parked car. Checking the rearview mirror, all she could see was Dawn turned in earnest conversation with the air.  
  
Spike’s soul had been put back? This was finally over?  
  
“Is it?” Mike’s voice responded. “Can’t tell, what with the rest of the stink. Lady do that?”  
  
“Yeah. He earned it once, so I guess he was entitled to have it back, no extra charge. He won’t be happy about it,” Dawn reflected.  
  
“Why’s he not waking up, then?”  
  
“Giles put a sleep on him. Until we can wash off the oil. Maybe he’ll wake up then. Does it sting really bad?”  
  
“You can wait, Dawn. Don’t get it on-- Do as you please, then.”  
  
“It’s been so long,” Dawn commented apologetically. “I’ve missed him so much…. It’s not so bad. Burny, sure, but not like you’re gonna catch fire or anything. Do you think he chose the collar himself? Because it matches.”  
  
Beside Buffy in the front seat, Giles said unexpectedly, “I think not. The whole Nijinski effect, that would be Ethan. He likes to play-- Never mind.”  
  
Buffy fumed. Everybody getting to paw at Spike except her. She stepped on the gas.  
  
But still--the soul was back! Everything would be OK now!  
  
Pulling into the driveway at Revello, she tolerated Mike carrying now-unwrapped Spike as far as the porch, then wheeled and took a stance in front of the doorway, blocking it.  
  
“The hand-off is here. My place. My vampire. I’ll disinvite you if you try to make a thing about it.”  
  
With Dawn beside him, irritably scrubbing her right hand on her overalls, Mike handed Spike over with no fuss--not quite as impassive as maybe he wanted to be.  
  
Patting his arm consolingly, Dawn said, “You can get washed up in the kitchen. Then maybe you’d take Kennedy and Xander home? Do you know where Xander lives? I can--”  
  
Buffy didn’t listen to the rest, thumping up the stairs to the bathroom.  
  
Starting the shower, she stepped right in with him. And he started fighting. It was crazy and bad: with the oil, it was impossible to get a good hold, and he was flailing out in every direction. He kicked the whole glass panel of the shower door out of its track, and it smashed on the tiles. When she had to drop him, she fell on top and held him down, which was easier. He didn’t go game-faced on her, just struggled and twisted, trying to get away.  
  
A squeeze bottle of shampoo had been knocked down. With nothing better in reach, she slowed him with an elbow to the temple long enough to twist the cap off. Then she poured the whole thing over him, explosions of suds. As the burning faded from her hands, the fight gradually went out of him. As she scrubbed the shampoo everyplace she found the flare and fade of the oil, his agitated breathing slowed and at length stopped completely. He hadn’t fallen back into the spelled sleep, though: his eyes blinked every now and again, mostly when a drift of suds washed into them.  
  
But he wasn’t there. Just inert. Which was good: let her straddle him backwards and get the unbelted pants off (he was barefoot) and smear the remaining shampoo over the rest of him without worrying about being bitten in the rear.  
  
When the shampoo ran out, she could flip him and do the other side, less frantically, with a bar of soap and a sponge. Finally unfasten the damn collar and hurl it away.  
  
Collaring him didn’t seem like such a funny idea to her anymore.  
  
When the water ran clear and her fingers found no more places that made them want to jerk back, like touching a hot kettle, she stood up, dripping, considering how to proceed. The bathroom floor was covered with glass from the broken panel, but her sneaks should be enough protection if she didn’t dance around in it. Drying off was just a habit, not a necessity.  
  
Risking leaving him alone for a moment, she peeked into the hall and found Dawn and Willow waiting there. “If you don’t want a free show, cover your eyes,” Buffy directed shortly, then ducked back to collect Spike. Wet, he was slippery, but nothing like the oil, and she could heave him up over her shoulder in something like a fireman’s carry. Get a good view of his ass, if they peeked, but that was their look-out.  
  
She shouldered into the hall, heading for her bedroom. And it all started again, the flailing and fighting. And this time, there was no solution as simple as shampoo. She finally had to knock him down and sit on him, holding his wrists locked on the runner and staring into his wide, panicked eyes as he threw his head back and forth, still struggling.  
  
Like Mike, she thought, in the troll dimension, only plainer. Something about the bedroom was setting him off. She hung her dripping head and accepted it, even though she didn’t understand it. Someplace else, then.  
  
“I’ll get something set up,” Dawn offered, “in the basement.”  
  
As Dawn ran off, Buffy wearily met Willow’s eyes. “Can you put him to sleep again?”  
  
Wide-eyed and pale, Willow shook her head hard. “He shouldn’t have been able to throw off what Giles set on him. I don’t dare. I don’t know what’s been done to him.”  
  
“You dared at the gym, and you didn’t know then either,” Buffy snapped.  
  
“It’s different. He was still tracking then--pretty much normal. This isn’t normal. Did Dawn say he had his soul back?”  
  
“I think so. Yes. That’s what she said.”  
  
“Good! It’s of the good, I think. But it complicates everything.”  
  
“Doesn’t it always. You think that’s why he’s this way? Because of the soul?”  
  
“Buffy, I just don’t know. When he quiets down, I can check him again. Like I did before, at the gym. Right now, I can tell you that his aura is all but nonexistent. For all the fighting, he’s putting out almost no energy--like it’s all just reflex. There’s basically nobody home. Everything shut down, except the fighting…like that’s the last thing to go.” Willow’s face twisted in alarmed unhappiness. “I didn’t mean it like that!”  
  
“How _did_ you mean it, then?”  
  
“Not like that.” Willow wrung her hands, then darted off into her room and shut the door.  
  
“I’m not peeking,” Dawn called from midway up the stairs. “The cot’s broken and gone, but I think I’ve got something set up that will do. Not peeking at all.”  
  
There were fewer and fewer niceties that seemed to matter. Buffy dragged Spike toward the stairs. The farther from the bedroom, the less he struggled. So Buffy heaved him up again in the fireman’s carry and carefully negotiated the two flights of stairs.  
  
One hand over her eyes, Dawn pointed with the other.  
  
Down by the sink end of the basement, Dawn had laid out two lounge chair cushions side by side with a pillow and a blanket from the linen closet. Buffy gratefully deposited him there and got the blanket over him. Then she at last allowed herself to lean forward and kiss him, long and deep.  
  
No reaction. Absolutely none. Still locked tight, inside of himself.  
  
From the upstairs hall, Willow called, “Rona put the tribute blood in the vegetable crisper. Should I bring some?”  
  
“No,” Buffy called back. “He’s fed. Might as well throw it out. I don’t care if there are starving vamps in Africa.”  
  
“Is it OK to look now?” Dawn asked, absurdly whispering.  
  
“Yeah: he’s decent. Or as decent as he gets.”  
  
As Buffy straightened, Dawn came with a big towel and caped it over Buffy’s shoulders. “You’re in drowned rat mode.”  
  
“Well, at least I don’t have to go to work tomorrow,” Buffy commented sourly.  
  
“Oh, yeah. There’s that….”  
  
They both stood looking down at Spike. As though the towel had chilled her, Buffy pulled it around her.  
  
With the eyeliner and the oil washed away and his hair drying in ungelled curls, Spike no longer looked like something exotic and alien. Almost normal. Almost like hers. Except it wasn’t like him to be so still. His eyes were half-shut. Buffy didn’t think he’d stirred since she’d laid him down. Not moving, she commented, “I should get into something dry. And the bathroom’s all full of glass. Have to be swept up.”  
  
“Willow said she’d take care of it.”  
  
“Yeah. All right. Good.”  
  
“Is he asleep?” Dawn whispered. “He always looks like he’s dead when he’s asleep.”  
  
“He’s home,” Buffy stated, mostly to herself. “He’s in one piece. He has his soul back. He’s not trying to give you severed hands. All of the good, right?”  
  
“But generally he breathes, every now and again,” Dawn commented, as though she hadn’t heard. “Sometimes he even snores, though he swears up and down that he doesn’t.”  
  
“Yeah,” Buffy sighed. “I know.”  
  
**********  
  
Sitting in an opened lawn chair, Dawn wrote _addiction_ on the notebook page. Under that, watching Spike rock and occasionally bang his head against the wall, listening to him break into occasional sieges of tuneless humming, she wrote:  
  
 _withdrawal?  
tattoo gone  
watch gone  
X me  
X time  
collar  
rocking = rhythmic motion  
wall banging = self-stimulation? self-punishment?_  
  
Willow came downstairs with a bowl of magical oddments. Looking at Dawn with head cocked, she asked, “Dawnie, shouldn’t you be asleep?”  
  
“It’s my birthday. I can stay up if I want to,” Dawn responded absently.  
  
Willow looked a little longer, then went and knelt down by the lawn chair pads. She already had the liquid pre-mixed this time. Before beginning the ritual, she said, “Spike? It’s just me, Willow. Spike?” When he didn’t respond, she looked disappointed and worried, then commenced anointing Spike with the feather at pulse points and heart.  
  
However, there wasn’t exactly no reaction. Spike leaned back against the wall, both hands clasped tightly together. His gaze still wandered around the basement without fixing on anything. No more motion or head-banging. During the time it took Willow to complete the ritual, no humming.  
  
He knew Willow, or somebody other than Dawn, was there. He didn’t want to interact with her.  
  
Giles had come down earlier, before going to find somewhere to stay, and stood quite a while studying Spike, much as Dawn was doing. Spike hadn’t moved or breathed the whole time Giles was there. There’d been the hand-clasping, too. After awhile, Giles had gone away without saying anything.  
  
When Buffy had come down and insisted on touching him, he’d locked up completely--the Willow/Giles reaction only more so. Rigid. Shaking. Breathing in tense little hitches. If he could have flinched through the wall, Dawn thought, he would have. Like Willow, Buffy had tried to talk to him. It had taken a good half hour before Buffy seemed to catch on that she was upsetting him and announced to the air that she was going to bed.  
  
It was only afterward that the rocking, head-banging, and humming had started.  
  
Once, he’d turned and patted at the wall, reaching: searching for something, maybe. Whatever it was, he hadn’t found it and had let his hands drop again.  
  
Writing _functional autism?_ in her notebook, Dawn asked, “How’s his aura?”  
  
Willow was quiet perhaps a minute, presumably observing. “The same. Minimal. About vamp normal.”  
  
“And magic?”  
  
“Nothing at all. No reason why he’s like this. Not magical, anyway.”  
  
Dawn made a neutral noise. As Willow passed, Dawn asked, “Could I borrow your laptop awhile?”  
  
Willow rubbed a wrist across her eyes. “Sure, if you promise not to delete anything. Yes, I know you know better, but just saying. Council archives?”  
  
“Just something I want to look up. Would you bring it to me?”  
  
“I guess. All right.”  
  
While Willow was gone, Dawn added to her list:  
  
 _clasped hands = manacles?  
fear  
humming--?  
music is rhythmic  
no focus  
oil--punishment? Not strong enough: Mike indifferent. Vamps have a higher tolerance for pain and sometimes enjoy it (e.g., Dru, per Spike. Also Spike, per Spike, convo that time he was drunk that summer.)  
oil--counter-irritant?_  
  
The humming had just started again when Willow returned, delivering her laptop. The humming stopped immediately. Clasped hands again and retreat--back against the wall.  
  
Setting up one of the outdoor tray-tables to open the laptop on, Willow commented, “It has about six hours on the battery pack, so remember to turn it off when you’re done. If it’s completely drained, I can’t recharge it. In other words, don’t go to sleep with it still on. If you’re gonna save things, make your own directory, OK?”  
  
“I save things in the notebook. I won’t forget to turn it off.”  
  
“What are you doing?” Willow bent to kibitz.  
  
“Observing. Residual effect of the Lady, maybe.”  
  
“Is…. Do you still hear her?”  
  
Dawn shook her head. “Not a peep since we left the mansion. Other fish to fry, probably. I don’t think she’s ever confined herself to the microcosm before. Certainly never for that long at a stretch. I think she was getting claustrophobic. She doesn’t have to be here to watch--that’s what she has me for.”  
  
“And you don’t know when she’s watching?”  
  
“Good night, Willow.”  
  
“Do you want a blanket or something? It’s pretty chilly down here.”  
  
“There’s a dryer full of towels. I’ll be fine.”  
  
“Well, good night, then.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Dawn wrote _mute: X words_.  
  
After Willow had gone back upstairs, and Spike had relaxed into alone mode, Dawn thought awhile, watching him rock.  
  
When he’d been retrieved from the First, intermittently hallucinating, Spike had been uneasy about her coming down unless the shackles were in place. He’d been visibly relieved, reassured, to get them locked and secure. Because he knew that no matter what weirdness popped up, he couldn’t mistake her for Angel or a Succoth demon (or whatever) and take a swipe at her.  
  
Although the chains and manacles were long gone and gladly discarded, it might be possible to improvise.  
  
Laying the notebook on the chair, she went to her room and poked through the contents of her jewelry box, concentrating on the metal pieces. She only had one click-shut bangle bracelet and one other solid one, of brass. She chose out a couple of her sturdier necklaces, removed their pendants, and hitched them together into one loop about two feet across. Should hold, she thought, against a moderate pull, though of course they’d be no real restraint.  
  
The important thing wasn’t actual restraint, she thought, but the perception. The meaning.  
  
On the way down, she took a freezer marker out of the kitchen pencil pot, then returned to her chair in the basement.  
  
She waited a little while to let Spike settle if he needed to, although she’d heard the humming before she’d descended the stairs. She ventured being a little glad that her presence was about the same to him as being alone.  
  
She spent awhile reading up on autism, confirming her impression that it was a matter of degree, not a yes/no absolute. Everybody had a certain amount of disconnect, refusal (or inability) to process sense data. A good example, she thought, was Buffy and vamp names and recognition. Unless Buffy really beat it into herself and made herself memorize it by sheer stubbornness, she found it almost impossible to retain a vamp’s basic identifying info from one night to the next. Dawn blanked out on algebra but sailed through plane geometry because it was visual and logical, not just numbers. Something about numbers made her brain go into a stupor. She could add a column of figures six times and come up with six different totals. Yay, calculators!  
  
When she’d finished the third article, she unfastened the looped chain and threaded it through the fixed bangle, then refastened it. She went over to Spike and picked up his lax right hand. Though his hand was broader than hers, she folded it as narrow as it would go and worked the bangle up, millimeter by millimeter, wryly thinking, _Where’s oil when you need it?_ Then she thought of something funny about the oil and giggled, trying to decide who she’d share it with.  
  
Fortunately, vamps were more flexible than other sorts of people. Eventually she edged the bangle past the protrusion of Spike’s folded thumb and onto his wrist, where it fit snugly. Probably have to cut it off. No matter.  
  
Through all this process, Spike had rocked and ignored her, letting her do anything she pleased with his hand. She probably could stick her pinkie in his eye with no result beyond maybe a heavy-lidded blink. Not that she wanted to, of course: she was only testing parameters.  
  
Catching up the chain, she waved it in front of him. She let it fall a few times, to let him hear the chime of the links, feel the weight and the coolness of the metal. Finally, making as much of a show and a noise about it as she could, she put it through the open bangle and clicked the bangle shut around his left wrist.  
  
“All fastened up safe now,” she commented, patting his cheek casually.  
  
Then she returned to her chair and read some more. After another article, she checked and was momentarily disappointed to see only the same “alone” behavior. Then she smacked her forehead and called herself a dodo: there’d be no true test until somebody else came downstairs.  
  
“How is he?” The shadow by a three-panel screen set next to the dryer was Mike. He glanced at her. “Sorry, thought you knew I was there. Was watching you…do whatever you were doing. Didn’t set out to surprise you.”  
  
Dawn gulped and let go her death grip on the laptop. “You could make a noise, you know.”  
  
“Did.” He wandered past, studying Spike.  
  
“What were you gonna do if he was up in Buffy’s room: peek in? Sneak in?”  
  
“Light’s been off, up there, quite some time. Could tell you were down here.”  
  
“Me? Or just somebody?”  
  
“You. Smelled you. Spike, too, when I got closer.”  
  
“From outside?” Dawn demanded incredulously.  
  
Mike glanced around at her briefly. “Down along that tunnel over there. Harris better set those doors. No vamp can get in without an invite. But there’s plenty of bad things that ain’t vamps could come, invitation not required.” Turned back to Spike, sitting slowly down onto his heels, Mike added, “Thought I’d stand sentry till daybreak. Should be all right then.”  
  
“Thanks. I guess.” She thought, _Tunnel?_  
  
Then she noticed: the humming had stopped. But that wasn’t definitive: that was on and off anyway. The rocking, though--Spike was still doing that. Not all rigid and still, as he’d been when Willow and Giles were here. She hoped for a moment, but Mike didn’t hold his attention: Spike’s vague, half-lidded gaze passed him by indifferently.  
  
But the hands weren’t clasped. Wrists still set on knees, hands hanging.  
  
“Still not definitive,” Dawn muttered, vexed. It might be that Spike wasn’t as anxious about hurting Mike as the occupants of Casa Summers. He might figure, down deep where he was, that Mike was capable of defending himself and the protection of even symbolic shackles wasn’t required.  
  
“What?” Mike said, when Dawn left the chair and started for the stairs.  
  
“I need a better test. I’ll be right back. Watch his hands.”  
  
Willow was always easy to rouse, startled by the least noise. Not that she really woke up, but her eyes were open though the brain wasn’t in gear. She was apt to be up and down at all hours. Without explaining, Dawn was able to persuade her, in robe and fuzzy slippers, to come back to the basement. And when Dawn looked at Spike, while Willow blurrily tried to find a non-existent website Dawn claimed she needed, there was confirmation: Spike was backed off against the wall again. No handclasp. Instead, he was tightly holding opposite wrists: assuring himself the token shackles were in place.  
  
“It says the site doesn’t exist,” Willow reported, bent over the laptop. Yawning, she noticed and asked, “What’s Mike doing down here?”  
  
“Helping me watch. It’s all right, maybe I got the reference link wrong. Sorry.”  
  
Dawn shepherded Willow back up the stairs and watched her fill a glass of water, then raced down again, triumphant, ready to launch a test of her next theory.  
  
“Mike, I need you to leave. All the way to the end of the tunnel, wherever that is--where Spike can’t notice you.”  
  
“He’s not noticing me now,” Mike pointed out.  
  
“He is. You just don’t know what to watch for.”  
  
“I watched his hands. Like you said. Minute you and Willow hit the hall, he clenched up, and--” Mike demonstrated the wrist grab. “Only he’s not doing that no more. Still smells hurt, but I don’t smell any magic about him. So why’s he like this?”  
  
“It’s a theory. I’m testing it. I don’t want to say, in case it turns out to be dumb.”  
  
Mike straightened. “With me?” he responded, merely surprised.  
  
“For myself. Please, Mike--” Dawn asked, looking up at him.  
  
“All right. If you say. I’ll go to where I can’t hear your heartbeat. Should be far enough. But I’ll still stand sentry. Nothing’s gonna bother you here. Except for me, and I’ll quit doing that.”  
  
Dawn didn’t see or hear him go, uncapping the marker. Sitting down beside Spike on the pads, Dawn waited until he relaxed, then reached across him to claim his left forearm. All in capitals, she wrote on it D A W N. From his wrist to the bend of his elbow.  
  
He smelled the marker odor, she thought: his head moved slightly. After a while of not moving at all, he appeared just slightly puzzled. After a longer while, his right hand lifted and rubbed slowly at the letters.  
  
Maybe ten minutes later, hoarse and uncertain, he said, “Bit?”  
  
Dawn hugged him hard.  
  
**********  
  
Dawn formulated, “Vampires have a desperate hunger for meaning. For things to make sense to them. More than blood, or fighting, or anything. They need things to matter. Because otherwise, what are they? Parasites. Empty motion across a landscape of empty time. They invest themselves in elaborate hierarchies, to matter to each other, because nobody else cares. They’re the mutts of the demon world. Finally, even if they’re successful at that, top of the tree, it’s not enough. Because they’re not impressing anybody except a bunch of mutts. So either to make an impact on the world or in despair of ever doing so, they set out to destroy it. Sour grapes, writ large.”  
  
“You know what that is?” Spike commented, still rocking and staring blankly around. But out of that could come words now, to her. A connection had been made and was open--like a phone line. “That’s a total crock of shit, that is. That what the Lady thinks?”  
  
“Shut up: I’m practicing.”  
  
“Oh, fine, practicing. Gonna out-git Rupert, are you?”  
  
“Shut up. What do you know about it, anyway?” It was a leading question: Dawn smiled to herself.  
  
“Oh, nothing much. Hundred twenty-some years of nothing much. Hardly any vamp has big plans. Live in the now. In the moment. Sometimes bad, sometimes….”  
  
He’d drifted away again. Eyes open, but blank. He couldn’t stay with her very long at a time. It was two in the morning.  
  
Dawn poked him with an elbow. “The three F’s: feeding, fighting, and fucking.”  
  
“Yeah,” he said, vaguely. “Yeah. S’not enough, though. Don’t make anything. Accomplish anything. Water all smooths out again." He seemed quite unaware that he was confirming her crocky theory. Jumping the tracks, he continued, "S'not like fucking, not really. No fun to it. Sort of takes up all your attention, though. Just happens and happens and happens.”  
  
“Yeah?” Dawn encouraged, though she knew she wasn’t following all the connections. Neither was he.  
  
“Yeah. Oil, that was nice. Balanced it out. Was real. Could feel it, all the time. Not like fucking in your head. Nothing to touch. Sure, hurt a little, but what doesn’t? Smell it, touch it, even taste it if you were desperate. Have to be, wouldn’t you? Like licking battery acid. But you sure knew was definitely something there. Not all in your head, like that other. Since you weren’t there to sort it for me. He’d took that.”  
  
“The verse,” Dawn guessed, and Spike bobbed his head, his empty eyes bereft. He rubbed his arm, where the printed name was: where the spiraling tattoo had been.  
  
“Took it all. Nothing left but me, and what he was doin’ to me. S’not enough. Or too much, maybe. Dunno.” A few minutes’ silence, rocking, trying to find a loose end of thought to hold onto. “Can have it put back, if you want. Didn’t mean to lose it. Was a promise, wasn’t it.”  
  
“Yeah,” Dawn said quietly. Confirming that connection, that meaning.  
  
“Didn’t mean to lose it. Just forgot, some way. That other, it’s real distracting. Demon liked it, too. Liked it real well. Better than the real, because, well, no waiting. Nothing to do, to get there. Earn it, like. Nothing to give and nobody to give it to. Just come in and come in and come in….”  
  
Dawn hugged him until he could settle.  
  
“Without the oil, though, there was nothing at all. Couldn’t take that. Sure, quit hurting, but…. Nothing at all. Tried music in my head, but I can’t do that. No good at it. Has to be outside to be any good.”  
  
When Dawn hopped up, he started breathing anxiously. She patted him, reassuring, “I’ll only be gone a minute. I have an idea.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“I’ll be right back.”  
  
“No.”  
  
She lost him then to the rocking, the rhythms that kept him aware of his own body. Stimulating the kinesthetic sense. The way the oil had kept him aware, inside his skin.  
  
The oil had looked pretty, too. On him. She suspected Ethan Rayne was into pretty. To buy exactly the right collar and then put it on and make Spike not mind wearing it.  
  
Beautiful pain. The price of the awareness of being alive, not lost in a fog of meaningless but powerful stimulation.  
  
Since he’d already lost contact, five minutes would be the same to him as an hour or a minute. A sense of the time was another thing Rayne had stolen from him, along with his watch. So Dawn didn’t hurry, going upstairs to her room and pawing in her school backpack for the CD player Buffy had finally broken down and bought her in replacement for the one Buffy had crunched some months back.  
  
The player itself was no good: Spike wouldn’t like her music.  
  
Detaching the headphones, she dug in a bottom drawer until she located the Tiny Tuner: a radio receiver smaller than a deck of cards. Plugging in the headphones, she searched up and down the minute dial until she found a 70’s heavy metal station. It wouldn’t be appreciated if she blasted everybody out of their beds.  
  
Almost immediately, the sound began to fade. The batteries were too old. She shouldn’t have left them in, they’d corrode the connections. That was an ironic thought. Tripping back down to the kitchen, she replaced the exhausted batteries with fresh ones from the oddment drawer, then returned to the basement.  
  
We were having a session of head-banging now. Well, Dawn had a pretty good replacement for that. She put on the headphones first, cranking up the volume as high as she could stand without wincing. Of course he could hear it, even without the headphones: the banging stopped, his head turned, and he looked at her.  
  
“Bit?” he said, in the same uncertain way he had before, looking for confirmation.  
  
“Yeah, me. I’ve only been away a few minutes. I have a couple of more things I have to do, but I brought you something to keep you company.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Most of the time, I’ll be here. You can see me, see that I’m here. Or if you want, Mike could come--he’s doing sentry on the tunnel….”  
  
She’d lost him. Too many free-floating nouns he hadn’t yet reconnected with. He looked puzzled and wary, which was one of the ways he showed scared. Nouns had never been his strong suit anyway: he was much more attuned to verbs. He _was_ a verb, much of the time.  
  
Leaving out extraneous nouns, she said, “There’s blood in the fridge, I think, unless it’s already been thrown out. Do you--?”  
  
“God, no!”  
  
That was a bad one. He didn’t unlock for over ten minutes, and she didn’t want to surprise him with the headphones--add to the undifferentiated storm of sensory input already bombarding him.  
  
Induced autism was as good a name as any. An analogy, a guess, not a clinical diagnosis; it wasn't as if Spike could look for professional treatment, and Dawn’s choices of ways to reach him, based on observation and conjecture, so far seemed to be more helpful than disastrous. Whatever it was called, it involved overwhelming Spike with charged sensory input he couldn’t avoid or retreat from, then taking it all away. Absolute overload followed by absolute deprivation. Fracturing and impairing his synergies with his demon. Then throw a soul into the mix--couldn’t forget that. She couldn’t truly imagine it, but the result was pretty devastating.  
  
“Bit? Did I do something? Hurt you?”  
  
This, this was just plain scared, no interpretation needed. She set the headphones down to seize his hands. “No, nothing like that. Spike? You only went back inside your head and slammed the door for a little while. It’s OK: you do that when you need to. You have a door, so you’re entitled to shut it. Whenever the inside or the outside is too much.”  
  
“Thought I’d hurt you. Never mean to, but I don’t properly know what I’m doing, some of the time,” he confided. “Losing the time. In big chunks, sometimes. Lost the whole agenda. Never get caught up now.”  
  
He was breathing again. Beginning to be overwhelmed as more pieces of the puzzle made themselves known to him, looming out of the fog.  
  
“It’s OK. Mike’s taken care of--”  
  
Spike started looking around him wildly. “Where’s the cell? Have to call Michael, he’s gonna--”  
  
Dawn got up and took two steps toward the screen. “Mike? Spike needs-- Oh.”  
  
Prompt as a genie when its name was spoken, Mike appeared from behind the screen and hunkered down in front of Spike: silent, waiting. They looked at each other for awhile, Spike rocking slightly, getting accustomed to the fact that Mike was there. Spike’s breathing slowed, growing less anxious.  
  
“Michael. Said something bad, something that shouldn’t happen. Maybe it’s happened already. Dunno--”  
  
“Noun, Spike,” Dawn prompted gently.  
  
“Yeah. Yeah. Those fledges. That were digging. Told you to see they got dusted. Sue and all. Did…did that get done?”  
  
“No,” Mike responded warily. “We got use for them. So I didn’t, till I’d argued it out and you’d said it twice. Didn’t do it like you said.”  
  
Spike hauled off and hit him. Knocked him off his feet, flat on his back. Mike lifted his head and they looked at each other some more. Then Spike tipped his head crooked and shut his eyes, and too fast to see, Mike was suddenly bent over him and biting down. Dawn got out of the way not quite as fast, but as fast as she could, retreating to the lawn chair and finally remembering to turn the laptop off. Willow would kill her otherwise.  
  
Watching Mike feed from Spike was scary and important in ways she had no words for. It was noisy and messy, some blood escaping and running down Spike’s naked chest. Dawn didn’t know if Mike was gonna stop and except for screaming, there wasn’t a thing she could do about it: she didn’t have her taser. And screaming probably wouldn’t do any good in time and would upset everyone. So she just held onto the chair arms as hard as she could.  
  
Finally, in a shaky voice, she got out, “Leave some for later?”  
  
That registered in Mike’s back. Then his head moved. He leaned away onto his heels again, licking his bloody mouth, in magnificent leonine game-face, wonderful and deeply scary. He said to Spike, “That’s all right, then.”  
  
Spike, leaned back on his elbows and looking very dim, didn’t respond. Dawn guessed if anything was apt to be too much, what she’d just witnessed fit the description. Maybe the headphones would be good now. They was were still blaring away, tiny and tinny: even Dawn could hear it. So it wouldn’t be a surprise. Kneeling on the lounge chair pads, she slipped the headset into place, adjusted the fit, and kept a hand on Spike’s shoulder and watched hard to check his reaction.  
  
Nothing for a minute or so. Then, eyes still shut, he smiled. A happy, almost drunk-loose smile. He tipped over on his side and maybe was asleep, it didn’t matter. He was connected to the music. Plugged in. Dawn rearranged the blanket and reached for the pillow, but it was too far. Mike handed it to her.  
  
“Mike, what time is it?”  
  
“Going for four. Something like that. You need exactly?”  
  
“No, that’s good enough.” Dawn got the pillow set so the earpiece of the headphone wasn’t pressing on it. That always hurt, when you did that. Pulling her knees up, she snuggled against Spike’s chest, and he knew she was there, shifting to let her find a more comfortable way to lie. “It’s been a real long day, and I’m not on a vamp schedule. I think Buffy’s gonna have to write me a note. Even if she lost her job, she should still be able to write me a note, right? Just gonna nap here a little while….”  
  
She felt Mike drawing a corner of the blanket over her. She knew nothing would get in, not while Mike was watching. She could practice her explanation more later. It was OK to sleep.  
  
**********  
  
Spike looked, Buffy thought, like the visiting head of state of a country with which they might soon be at war.  
  
He wandered into the front room after-breakfast Scooby conference accompanied by his interpreter (Dawn). Plonking himself down in the big chair by the weapons chest (Dawn perched solicitously on the arm, leaning against his shoulder), he proceeded to ignore everybody.  
  
He had headphones emitting tiny loud music, like a hornet yelling, hung around his neck--to Buffy, an unpleasant reminder of the collar, that she’d flung in the trash this morning with vicious satisfaction. Sitting with bare feet stuck out and crossed at the ankles (another pair of boots gone missing), mostly still, he was nevertheless pacing, or at least the feel of it was the same: working a circle of loose chain over and over between his hands. Like doing a violent rosary or something. Thin bracelets on each wrist--one brass, one silver. New fashion statement there. Or maybe he missed his watch.  
  
Dawn leaned in and whispered to him from time to time. Spike said nothing and rarely glanced up when anything was said to him. When Buffy asked him if he wanted coffee, a tight headshake was all the answer she got. He didn’t look at her. With his head bent, she couldn’t see his eyes.  
  
 _He’s not happy,_ Buffy thought. _He doesn’t want to be here. He’s mad about the soul. Or he’s mad about being rescued. If he keeps this up, I’m gonna belt him. Why won’t he look at me?_  
  
Despite the addition of Giles, it was a diminished group since Xander and Anya were separately absent. Xander had to work, and on the phone, Anya had declared herself much too busy to attend. Just Buffy, Willow, Giles, and the delegation from Mars.  
  
Willow had given a tense report on the fight from her perspective, mainly making the point that if Rayne became able to access and focus the stone’s random energy flow, she doubted she’d be able to do anything effective against it.  
  
“A Chaos Mage,” mused Giles, collecting the last muffin half, “attempting to turn what is currently an instrument of chaos into one of order, capable of being directed and of processing energy in a coherent manner. Ironic. The trouble with that, for Ethan, will be that he likes it best the way it is. Even against his best interests, he’ll be reluctant and possibly slow to attempt to manipulate it himself.” Giles put down the muffin to sip tea. “Much more likely, he’ll try to acquire another cat’s paw to work it for him. A circle of mages might possibly be able to do so. Or he may attempt to reassert influence over the one he had.” Giles looked at Spike a moment, then shifted his attention to Dawn and asked, “What may we expect from the Lady at this juncture?”  
  
“I think,” Dawn responded slowly, “she’s done as much as she’s going to. She’s left it up to us.”  
  
“You’re not expecting her back, then.”  
  
Dawn did a quick headshake. “I don’t think so. No. She hated it here.”  
  
“We noticed,” Buffy put in sourly.  
  
“We can’t expect any further intervention, then, from that quarter?” Giles asked.  
  
“Nope. Not likely. That’s what she has minions for. And please ignore me doing the Dance of Jubilation and Freedom over here.”  
  
Giles said, “So it becomes fairly urgent that we know how susceptible Spike remains to Ethan’s influence,” and waited.  
  
Everybody looked at Spike, and he knew it: shoulders pulling tight, working faster with the chain.  
  
“I’m all right,” he said finally without looking up.  
  
“He’s not,” Dawn contradicted. “He’s better, but he’s still having an awful time making any sense of things. Connecting. Sorry, Spike, but they have a right to know.”  
  
“S’all right, Bit. You do whatever you have to,” Spike muttered.  
  
“Are you still aware of him?” Giles inquired gently, if bluntly.  
  
Spike hitched a shoulder. “Suppose so. Some. Demon’s…pretty shagged out, though. Not taking much notice. An’ it gets lost in the…whirl. Of the everything.” One hand lifted listlessly to mime spinning, then went back to the chain, moving it quickly along the sprockets of his knuckles.  
  
“‘Shagged out,’” Giles repeated, tight-faced and narrow-eyed, inspecting the dregs of his tea for omens. “Just how literally do you mean that?”  
  
Spike didn’t say anything for long enough it was plain he wasn’t going to.  
  
Buffy looked from Giles, to Spike, to Giles again, and gulped faintly, “Oh.”  
  
“S’not like that, pet,” Spike said suddenly without lifting his eyes. The chain was quiet in his hands, gripped tightly. “Don’t mean nothing. Means a whole lot of nothing. Demon don’t care, just like it don’t care what it feeds on. Demon’s not particular. Real distracting, is all. Can’t focus on much else. At all, really. I--”  
  
The chain popped. Part slithered to the floor.  
  
Dawn and Giles broke in together to stop the dreadful explanation, then went into the verbal equivalent of a doorway dance, each trying to move aside and invite the other past and only continuing to get in each other’s way.  
  
“No,” said Giles, “do continue, Dawn. Please.”  
  
“I made some notes,” Dawn said distractedly, stroking Spike’s neck as he hunched tighter in the chair, his empty hands seizing one another so hard you could practically hear the bones crunch. “Vampires need meaning. Starved for it. They--”  
  
Announcing, “Can’t do this,” Spike erupted out of the chair and stalked toward the hall. “Need a fag. What kind of house is it, bloke can’t find a fag anyplace?”  
  
“Cigarette,” Giles translated faintly, as Dawn scampered after Spike. “I should have thought. I’ll get some.”  
  
“No, I will,” Buffy decided, and grabbed the keys out from the weapons chest saucer.  
  
It took longer to park than it did to drive to the corner pharmacy, a few blocks away, and buy a couple of packs of cigarettes. He’d need a new lighter, too, she realized, and chose the silver Zippo most similar to Spike’s Old Faithful.  
  
He’d lost everything, she thought, returning to the SUV. Pride, dignity, self-control, and god, the credit card, on which she’d just charged the purchases.  
  
She drove home fast and reported her realization to Willow. Collecting the laptop from the basement, Willow didn’t take long in confirming the worst: the account had been cleaned out, and even a little more. There were overdraft charges.  
  
“I’ll take care of reporting it,” Willow commented grimly, as Buffy sat stunned and chilled. Carrying the laptop over to the weapons chest, Willow got on the phone there.  
  
“Not to worry,” Giles commented. “Given the circumstances, I arranged for theft protection when the account was set up. The funds should be recoverable. Though it may take some time, getting it all sorted. A lawyer’s services may be required. Has a lawyer been retained?”  
  
“I have no idea,” Buffy said, not really taking Giles’ reassurance in. All she fixed on was _gone_ and _lawyer_. “I should give Spike his _fags_.”  
  
She headed for the basement but passing the kitchen, she heard the miniscule din of the headphones. Spike was holding onto the edge of the kitchen island like grim death, his back to her, inches short of where a big crooked rectangle of sunlight slanted in through the window. “Here,” Buffy said, slapping down the two packs of cigarettes and then the lighter.  
  
“Ta,” he whispered, not moving.  
  
“You can smoke in the basement, if you want.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“The credit card’s been maxed out,” Buffy informed him. “Willow and Giles are trying to get it fixed. And I’ve lost my job. Because of the dance. Or whatever it was.”  
  
For no one reason, she was terribly angry at him. It seemed to her that everything was falling apart for lack of him at the center. She didn’t know where he was, except noplace he’d let her reach him.  
  
He started rocking forward and back, hanging onto the edge of the island. In and out of the slant of sunlight. His hair was starting to smoke. She grabbed him convulsively and yanked him back. He pushed and fought to get away, but not in any coordinated way. More the way he’d balked, last night, at being taken into her bedroom.  
  
“What is _wrong_ with you?” she demanded, holding on tight, backing into the hall. “Do you miss your boyfriend, is that it? Miss the goddam oil? I’m not totally stupid, you know! What’s--”  
  
He sagged: suddenly dead weight in her arms. Slowly, she bent and let him slide onto the carpet runner. He puddled into crash position: curled up tight, fingers laced over the back of his neck, head clutched between protective arms.  
  
“Way to go, Buffy,” Dawn commented cuttingly, leaning over the banister and then coming the rest of the way down. “A whole night’s progress, pfft!” Pushing between, Dawn bent over Spike, stroking his back, patting his shoulders, softly speaking his name. The headphones continued a miniature orgy of attenuated sound.  
  
Numb and frightened, Buffy backed away as Willow and Giles came out of the front room and stood beside her, observing Dawn’s attempts to get Spike to uncurl.  
  
“Not a good sign,” Willow commented, biting at the edge of a thumb.  
  
“What’s the matter with him?” Buffy demanded in a small voice. “Why is he like this?”  
  
“It’s my fault,” Giles said, removing his glasses for ritual polishing. “I was wrong to force that particular issue. I suppose….” His lips set in a grim line, he resumed the glasses and put the handkerchief away. “My objectivity in that area seems to be nil. It’s not as though he courted it. I believe I owe him an abject apology. It’s Ethan I should be dealing with. I shall make arrangements to do so. Perhaps I can persuade him to abandon this game before matters become even worse. Now that he’s lost his current pet.” His tone was savage. Adding, “I have some materials in the hire car,” Giles turned and left.  
  
“Will, can you get into his head?” Buffy asked.  
  
“He hates when I do that,” Willow responded uneasily.  
  
“Anything has to be better than this. If he doesn’t like it, I’m the one who said so. He can take it up with me, if he wants.” She was thinking of vamp protocols: Spike vamp-Mirandizing her and Mike in the dark graveyard, spelling out their respective rights, then grimly slapping the taser into her hand. “He can talk to Dawn. He can talk to Giles. He’d probably talk to you if he had anything to say. I’m the only one that’s poison, that throws him into a fit. I have to know why. It’s pretty plain he’s not gonna tell me. Even if he could. When he’s conscious. You still can, right?”  
  
“Once a connection like that has been opened, it can never be completely shut,” Willow confirmed, gnawing the thumb some more. “I don’t listen in, though. Not unless he specifically tells me to. And…I think he’s still got Rayne in there. Two might be a bit much.”  
  
“Can Rayne hurt you? On the bounce like that?”  
  
“I don’t think so. If the link were strong enough for that, Spike wouldn’t still be here: Rayne would have reeled him in again. He’s holding against that. The soul, maybe…. Dawn?” Willow appealed for a second opinion.  
  
“Go ahead. I thought I had him stabilized. He said he was OK to come to the meeting. Now we’re back to square one. Maybe square zero or even minus,” Dawn responded in a dispirited voice.  
  
“OK,” Willow said with no enthusiasm, and closed her eyes. Her fingers made a stiff gesture at her side. She recoiled with a wincing expression, like a twitch, a few times. Buffy and Dawn both kept still, watching her. After awhile, the corners of Willow’s mouth drooped and her shut eyes squinched tight, as though she was about to break into tears. Instead, she blinked and looked at Buffy. “It’s no fun in there,” she reported. “Something like strolling into the leading edge of a hurricane. Like they show on TV, I mean. I’ve never been in one. Not a lot of left coast hurricanes. But with all the sideways rain, and the wind, and the lightning, signs and traffic lights flapping, and like that.” Willow waved her arms around, demonstrating. “But there’s something I think you should see. It’s quiet there, otherwise. Maybe I can cut through just the edge to it, like the center. The ‘eye,’ they call it, though that’s only a metaphor here, it’s more deep than it is middle. Pay no attention to the babbling witch behind the curtain. Except to take my hand, that is. It won’t make a lot of sense, at first, but wait and it will. You’ll make the sense, because that’s what people do. They have to.”  
  
Willow offered her hand. With about a ton of reservations but resolutely, Buffy took it.  
  
And Willow had been right: it _was_ like getting whirled around, blown from every direction, slapped hard by a drenching rain. Crashes of thunder and lightning bolts scarily close. Or maybe that was only the influence of the image Willow had given her for what she was experiencing. What interpretation she was therefore predisposed to apply to the primal confusion, to make any sense of it at all. But she was also conscious of direction, Willow pulling her steadily along, a light and a force dauntingly vast. _I won’t peek,_ Willow’s intention said clearly in Buffy’s mind, _I’ll just connect, because it’s personal. Private._  
  
The rushing confusion was gone, just like that. At first, nothing replaced it. Only a void. Only emptiness. But there was a voice steadily muttering. Spike’s voice. She couldn’t make out anything more than that and tried to hear better, go closer. The quiet resolved into a room. Small, like an attic. She had to bend down, otherwise she’d bang into something. She had to crouch and get as small as she possibly could to get closer.  
  
She couldn’t make him out plainly but she could see the position: all curled up tight, arms around his head, forehead against knees, bare feet lying pale and vulnerable looking. Without pause, over and over in manic repetition, he was muttering, “Don’t hurt the girl. Don’t hurt the girl. Don’t hurt the girl. Don’t--”  
  
She grabbed him. Curled around him as tight as he was curled around himself. Was somehow all around him everywhere like a liquid and a barrier, so nothing could get at him, hurt him. Loving him entirely. _You didn’t. You won’t. I’m not afraid. Nothing scares me except the distance. You pulling away from me, shutting me out. Nothing between. No distance. I’m here._  
  
She had no thought or awareness of anything else, anywhere else she could be. Any other way to be. Yet she found herself in the hall, on the floor, clutching Spike just as hard as she could. Trying to gather him in, be everywhere around him, which was impossible as well as undignified and slightly embarrassing with people looking on. She held on just the same because it was impossible to imagine letting go.  
  
Within her anaconda embrace, Spike stirred, asking uncertainly, hesitantly, “Buffy?”


	14. Chaos

What Spike saw was a moving cubist collage. Blocks of bright, patches of color he supposed were the lawn, trees, and houses opposite, oblongs of varied darks that were shadows, smeared contrails that maybe were passing cars. He could guess, make tentative assignments, but it wouldn’t resolve. Add to that the sense of whirling, and it was pretty much like viewing the world from a spinning roundabout.  
  
Only Buffy was he certain of.  
  
Her scent, her voice, the motions of her hands and the warmth of her body were a tether, an anchor, an escape from confusion. He tried to focus just on that but all the rest was too strong. His head was still full of fog.  
  
He guessed they were on the front porch, sitting together on the glider (which he knew because it moved slightly whenever he needed to rock to keep from being swept away) because…well, in back, in the kitchen, the mid-morning sun had been coming in. So that would rule out the back porch, right there. And he still fought off the associations of the upstairs room that was hers, where he’d hurt her, or the demon had, or something like that, he couldn’t get it straight except to know he must stay away until he knew better what he was doing. Had done. Might do. Something like that.  
  
Her voice said, “I don’t want to push--I want to understand.”  
  
“Then that makes two of us.” Freeing his hand from the clasp of hers but leaning against her, keeping the contact down the length of his arm, hip and leg against leg, he opened the cigarette pack and lit up--nearly all of it by touch. Trusting muscle memory to get him through. Considering the cigarette, he remarked, “Dunno why I keep doing this. Could stop anytime, but I don’t. Need something to do with my hands, some way, seems like. Should take up knitting. Smoke, that’s not good for you or Bit. Should quit.”  
  
Undistracted, Buffy asked bluntly, “What did he do to you?”  
  
“Nothing that hasn’t happened, or I haven’t done, before. Had a bit more choice about it other times, is all. Except…. Nothing I think…you’d understand.” He bent his head, to not meet her eyes.  
  
“I’m a big girl, Spike. I know it wasn’t your choice. But I want you to tell me.”  
  
Her demand compelled him. Trying to make sense of it for her might help him make sense of it for himself. He shut his eyes, trying to get his thoughts in order. “Well, he fancied me, didn’t he? An’ he could get at my demon direct. Demon, it don’t say no to that sort of thing. Real or not. Demon, it’s not particular--no more than about what it feeds on. Never thought you’d hear me say I’d got more of that than I wanted, did you?” He was embarrassed--not because of what he’d done in that regard but what he thought she’d make of it.  
  
He continued, “Fact is, problem is, it meant nothing. Generally doesn’t, to vamps. No more than scratching an itch, forget it the next second, unless you’re playing power games, that sort of thing. Not like it is to humans. Not like…us. But so much of it. So strong. Like bein’ forced to drink from a fire hose. Can’t disconnect from it and can’t really want to. And you’d do pretty much anything to keep it coming, stay connected there, even though it’s at the price of everything else. Everything you actually want; everything that matters.  
  
“All the sense…all the sense runs out of things. Everything. Bleeds away. Soul, it wants it all settled and tidy. What’s right. What’s wrong. And it won’t go like that.” He waved at the yard and the sidewalk. “See the sunlight, there, and know quite plain it’s death to me, and I still halfway forget that, or don’t care, or something. I look at it and it’s just bright and empty. Doesn’t _mean_ to me what it should. Expect it will sort itself out some way. But…can’t right now. Can’t let it get mixed up with that other…that didn’t mean nothing. But was all….”  
  
The glider moved: he’d started to rock again. Buffy hugged him, held him close, until he could settle and be still. She said quietly, “So…you miss it.”  
  
“Yes. No. Demon, it’s all satisfied. It….” A memory surfaced and he locked tight, rigid with it. “Oh god.”  
  
“What? Spike, what is it?” She shook him.  
  
The fog was thicker, rolling in blood-tinged, cutting him off from everything else.  
  
He’d been somewhere. Not here. He’d hunted and fed like a ravenous fledge--to repletion and beyond. If it’d been left up to him, he’d still be doing it. He’d been freed and loosed to it, the whole of his desire. A feast to all his senses. An orgy of bloodlust it had taken the oil, and more immediate sensations, to draw him out of to the point that he could attend to new instructions. He remembered, and the soul sickened so that he felt it as horror, not only as satisfaction. But that, still, too. Because he still wanted it. And mustn’t. Soul was repulsed by what the demon craved. And he couldn’t reconcile them.  
  
So he just said NO. Not aloud, likely--only inside. The soul didn’t force him but the soul gave him a place to stand and the leverage. He could _not_ want this. He could _not_ choose it. It still dragged at him but couldn’t wholly carry him away without his consent; and that, he did not give.  
  
Like Rayne himself, whom Spike hadn’t even begun to consider, apart from his effects. Who to some degree still had access, still could get at him. But could no longer force Spike’s acceptance, lacking the complicity of Spike’s demon yearning toward the mage’s sensual blandishments and dragging Spike along.  
  
Once he’d endured agonies to get to YES and surrender. Now he fought the pull of pleasure unending and meaningless to maintain a NO and refusal.  
  
 _NO: I will not do that, be that. NO: I will not want what the demon wants and delights in. NO: I will not give up choice.  
  
Non serviam. Non serviam. Non serviam. Non serviam._  
  
**********  
  
Dawn leaned in at the front room arch, where Buffy and Giles were in solemn conference, to report, “He’s having another ‘Oh, god!’ moment--at the computer this time.”  
  
Rising, Buffy asked Giles, “What is that--the fifth? Or the sixth?”  
  
Dawn led the way across the hall.  
  
Recovered from the basement, the laptop sat on the long den table cleared of birthday decorations. Spike was leaning over it, talking in mostly incoherent phrases full of swearing over the phone: “--don’t care, just get it the fuck out of there. Right now. And how do we stop ‘em? What d’you mean, you don’t know?”  
  
Until she’d seen it, Dawn hadn’t realized that Spike, Inc. had a web page. Red on black, natch. And full of recruitment (read: bounty) notices. What was on offer for a “specialist in pain application:” a torturer, Dawn figured. Delivered FOB, the going rate (described as a finder’s fee) was $ 1,000. Not to be paid to the torturer, apparently, but to the one who located and delivered the recruit. Another listing was for a “martial arts trainer, black belt level” but was listed as “filled:” Dawn guessed somebody had been recruited (or kidnapped) to fill that position, and the recruiting bounty paid.  
  
Before she could read any more, Spike refreshed the page, which vanished. “Revoke it,” he said to the phone. “I don’t know, put up a notice. Say no more recruiting, no bounty gonna be paid, nothing. I don’t care about the goddam fucking type style, just _do_ it!”  
  
“Hey!” Dawn protested when Spike held the phone away with the clear intention of pitching it against the opposite wall. “That’s my phone!”  
  
“Right. Right.” Spike carefully set the phone down, arm’s reach away. Then he buried his face in his hands.  
  
Buffy leaned against the door casing, arms folded. “So what is it this time, Spike?”  
  
It was plain to Dawn that these successive epiphanies of guilt were wearing down Buffy’s capacity for sympathy.  
  
Spike slid his hands so his eyes showed. Through the day, he’d looked more and more exhausted. Worn out, Dawn thought, by the effort of trying to connect. Which wasn’t being helped by the inventory the soul seemed determined to make of everything Spike had done in its absence and then pointing out to him, in glaring clarity, why that had been the worst possible thing to do, letting him know he was a monster and a stupid monster, at that. She wished the soul would shut the hell up and grant him a little peace. But it seemed perfectly merciless and paid no heed to anybody’s preferences except its own.  
  
“The Dalton was due to be delivered today,” he announced, in helpless misery. “Likely too late to stop it.”  
  
“China?” Giles inquired.  
  
“No, Chicago.”  
  
Buffy put in, “Start at the beginning. What’s a Dalton?”  
  
“The real one, the first one, was the Master’s. Master that was. Expert on ancient languages, mystical texts. I inherited him, but he didn’t last long. Big Blue, the Judge, wiped him out, just like that. For no reason at all. Been missing him,” Spike explained listlessly. “Need help with the translation. Need a new Dalton. And I’d got to talking with this chap at the University of Chicago, good knowledge of Sumerian and related languages. Been sending him pieces I’d had trouble getting straight, context was ambiguous. Cyrus Smith. Another chap at Oxford, but the transport would have been a problem, so I’d settled on this Smith to be my new Dalton. Sent him this made-up thing about a grant, total shit but enough to get him interested….”  
  
Giles said quietly, “You were going to have him turned,” and Spike bobbed his head.  
  
“Simpler that way than having it done at the other end, and there’s no control over who does the turning. Could ruin him.”  
  
Even Dawn was vaguely appalled by the matter-of-fact explanation.  
  
Face pulling into an expression of acute distaste, Buffy said, “People turned on demand? On order? Spike, that’s terrible!”  
  
Spike lifted his head and looked at her with an expression that said he knew exactly how awful it was. “It’s how it’s always been done. How Dalton was done, most like.”  
  
Giles looked as though he wanted to make notes.  
  
Buffy said grimly, “You have to stop it.”  
  
“Dunno if I can. He was supposed to come today. This morning. Had a driver gonna collect him at the airport. Maybe it’s already done. Have to get onto Huey, see where it stands. And Mike.”  
  
“Why Mike?” Dawn inquired, and Spike just looked at her with that horribly weary blank-eyed expression, leaving her to figure out for herself that of course Spike wasn’t gonna turn anybody himself, hated the very idea. But Mike, who’d do nearly anything for him, would have no qualms about doing that. “Oh.”  
  
Spike said to Buffy, “Told you there were parts of this just can’t be done with a soul. It’s gonna all go smash now. Can’t do what’s needed. Can’t even think it out right. Best if I’d never tried.”  
  
“I didn’t say that!” Buffy responded hastily, and went to put her arms around his shoulders. “It was a good idea. It still is!”  
  
Spike shook his head. “Might as well just go on up to the factory and dust ‘em all. Get it over with. Do me too while you’re about it.”  
  
“Now you’re just being all depresso-guy. Because of the soul. It’s good, that you got it back, but I guess it takes some getting used to if you’ve been without it awhile. Don’t try to make these sweeping decisions until you’re more rested. Connected,” Buffy advised anxiously.  
  
Reaching for the phone, Spike said, “Have to get onto Huey,” and dialed with Buffy hovering over him.  
  
Dawn and Giles retreated to the hall, watching, then traded a thoughtful glance.  
  
“This isn’t good,” Dawn commented. “Between Rayne and the Lady, they’ve just about done him in.”  
  
“They’ve certainly incapacitated him from functioning as the de facto Master of Sunnydale. But is that altogether a bad thing?”  
  
“Would you prefer Digger? And the Hellmouth open, blasting the ‘Come one, come all’ dinner bell and making Sunnydale an attractive piece of demon real estate again?” Dawn retorted. “Without Spike, it’s a power vacuum, Giles. And power vacuums have a way of filling themselves. Spike’s the best of the available choices. He’s the cornerstone and the connection. Without him, everything _will_ fall apart. Let’s have some realpolitik here, please.”  
  
She found Giles regarding her quizzically. He inquired, “Dawn?”  
  
She felt herself flushing. “Yes, I’m me. Just because I’m seventeen doesn’t mean I don’t know things!”  
  
“Quite. If I implied otherwise, I apologize. I’m going to contact Ethan now. See if it’s possible to make him see reason. That or threaten him effectively. I’d meant to have Spike in attendance, but….” Giles was again viewing the den.  
  
“Not such a great idea,” Dawn agreed. “Are you inviting me to sit in?”  
  
“I believe some objectivity is called for, yes. Ethan and I…have history.”  
  
“I’d already figured that out. But if you want a referee, an impartial observer, I’m not it: I want that bastard dead. For what he’s done to Spike.”  
  
“I am duly warned. Ethan tends to inspire that view…. I think it would be unwise to involve Willow further at this point. And Buffy doesn’t present an effective threat in this particular instance, since Ethan is human. Regrettably. You, however, are an unknown quantity, especially if Ethan can’t be sure the Lady is no longer in residence. Let’s leave it that way, shall we?”  
  
“I’ll try not to pop my gum or say anything too blatantly teenish.”  
  
“Let’s be about it, then.”  
  
Dawn followed Giles into the front room.  
  
**********  
  
“Why, Ripper!” Ethan Rayne purred. He had no eyelids, Dawn noticed--at least none that showed. Eyes set--black, lively, and sardonic--flush to the face, as though slits had been cut, showing sparking blackness underneath.  
  
About half life-size, the image of the Chaos Mage’s head and shoulders hovered like a hologram within what had to be a genuine crystal ball on the coffee table. Like a low-tech picture-phone. Dawn was seated on the couch next to Giles, violet overalled knees decorously together, intending to be a silent audience unless Giles gave her a cue to be otherwise.  
  
That was gonna be hard, though: anybody as pleased with himself as Rayne made her want to do wretched things to his kneecaps.  
  
“What a delightful surprise,” Rayne continued, all sly mischief. “But I should have known you wouldn’t be able to keep away, sending your little contact niggle. You’d think I’d have forgotten it after all this while, but somehow I haven’t. Now that you’ve seen the makeover, isn’t he sinfully decadent? And surely all bewildered and confused over what he’s been playing at. Rumpled and pliable. Aren’t they delicious when they’re like that? I know I was. Or at least so I was told.”  
  
“He has a soul now, Ethan. You--”  
  
“What a coincidence! So did I!”  
  
“--You won’t be able to recapture him easily.”  
  
“Ah, then it will have to be hard. Hard boy, our vampire. Or is he? Ours, that is. Hard is really a given, with vampires. And if you think the censorious miss will make me curb my tongue out of dire shame for what she may infer, remember how keen you used to be about the proper education of the young? I’ve come around to your way of thinking: catch ‘em when they’re still credulous and trusting, so as to waste the least possible time in corrupting them. If--”  
  
Giles broke in wearily, “Don’t be such a prat,” and Rayne paused and cocked his head, smiling a surprised, more genuine smile.  
  
“I’m used to being the annoying one. Must see if I’m still the reigning champion, don’tcha know.”  
  
“Ethan, you’ve been in his mind: you know his current obsession. It’s certainly not knackered old retired librarians.”  
  
“But why ever not, dear boy? The librarian was merely one mask; this is only another. Halfway mage, halfway magister, a succession of pious timidities. But we know one another’s true faces, don’t we?”  
  
Rayne’s face changed. The tight lines vanished. The cheeks filled; the forehead smoothed. Dawn was looking at the face of a boy her own age: humorous, intelligent, alert. But the eyes…the eyes were the same.  
  
Giles shut his eyes, looking pained. “Merely another mask.”  
  
“Reality is malleable, dear boy. Infinitely so. I’ve told you and told you but you still won’t admit you see it. It’s very vexing of you.”  
  
“Appearance is malleable,” Giles contradicted curtly. “Reality is rather something else. But you’re far beyond being able to tell them apart anymore. I’m attempting to give you warning, so kindly leave off the piffle.”  
  
The mage’s face slid back to its former fortyish appearance. “But I’m so good at it,” Rayne complained, pouting.  
  
“The reality is that in interfering in this matter, you’ve made some serious enemies.”  
  
“What, my newest pet? I doubt it. Vampires are all children of Chaos, as you well know. I am their natural mentor.”  
  
“Not this vampire. I doubt you’ve known many if you don’t realize to what degree he’s turned his nature to consistency and Order. But I wasn’t speaking of him. This isn't your typical mischief that you've undertaken, Ethan: you've engaged not merely individuals, but forces. You’ve antagonized the Slayer: the oldest and most powerful there has ever been. Who has allied and bound herself to this vampire, and he to her--much against my advice, I might add. An injury to one is an injury to both; it will be repaid in full measure. She is the guardian of the Hellmouth. And then, there’s the Lady of Doorways, who’d gladly have your guts for garters. This matter of the Hellmouth is within her purview, and she was at some pains to have it shut. She’s taken a personal interest in seeing that it remains that way. Not a good enemy to have. Add a third female and you face the Triune Goddess, terrible and merciless. If you persist, they will have you dead, Ethan. I’ve never wanted that. Soundly thrashed, yes. Not dead.”  
  
Rayne said nothing for a moment--remarkable in itself--as the two men regarded one another. Then Rayne turned his face aside, his mouth twisted in bitterness. “I’m touched by your concern. Since our ways parted, I’ve known the Slayer was no friend to me. And when have the Powers ever been kindly disposed to Chaos or those who worship infinite change?” Abruptly smirking, cordial and offensively familiar, he went on, “As to the third, are you put out with me, Dawnie, for giving our Spike a little treat, a small holiday from responsibility? He’s been so glum, so mum-faced, of late. I merely showed him a good time: all the three F’s that define vampire nature, in full measure.”  
  
“Yeah, I just _bet_ you did!” Dawn shot back. “You hurt him, and nobody does that and gets away with it! I’ll make you sorry!”  
  
“Temper, temper,” chided Rayne, the smirk fading into a thoughtful expression.  
  
“All three,” Giles mentioned quietly. “The Hellmouth is nothing to you. If you persist, it will be your undoing. Go play your tricks elsewhere. Leave it, for pity’s sake.”  
  
“My goodness: a chance to annoy three remarkable females and you, in the bargain. However could I give that up? Achieve my greatest work to date--opening a dimensional gate not merely to anywhere but to everywhere simultaneously, random energies flooding out to disrupt and transmogrify mundane reality with the faery kiss of the deeply strange. How could I forego that? Besides, I’ve been paid. I have a contract,” declared Rayne, prim and smug. “Surely, Rupert, you’re not suggesting that I default on my responsibilities? My sworn word?”  
  
Giles, mouth pulled tight, said nothing. And the crystal was suddenly empty. Removing his glasses to rub his eyes, he commented, “Well, at least I tried.”  
  
Dawn thought it was more a matter of “Hell hath no fury like an Ethan scorned,” but she tactfully didn’t say so. After all, she was seventeen and supposed to be cool about such things.  
  
**********  
  
Cyrus Smith was dead and expected back shortly. Day or so. Spike set the phone down on the table with immense care since it was Bit’s and he didn’t want to break it. Too much already broken. Everything, it seemed to him. And no fixing it.  
  
He shut his eyes rather than watch the eddy-spin of shapes and colors that wouldn’t resolve into any sense he could take in or understand.  
  
Michael, he’d been so proud of himself, stopping to let the dying man feed. Never done such a thing before. Might know the one thing that couldn’t be undone, that’d be what Mike would do, exact to orders.  
  
“Too late,” Buffy’s voice surmised.  
  
Spike nodded. He made a graphic throat-cutting gesture, then let the hand thump onto the table top as though he'd lost control, it didn't belong to him anymore. “Michael didn’t do nothing except what I said. S’all on me: the responsibility. You go ahead, do what you have to.” He sagged back in the chair, eyes still shut, not even waiting. Couldn’t bring himself to care. Had it coming, didn’t he, for messing things up so bad.  
  
The blow to his chest barely registered. The punch to his nose, though, he noticed since he hadn’t expected it or actually anything past an initial short, sharp shock.  
  
Buffy’s angry voice ordered, “Look at me!”  
  
No point to that. Already knew he’d failed her and she was furious with him for it. Could smell the rage boiling off of her, hear the quick breath and the blood pounding fast.  
  
“Look at me! I’m not gonna be forced to do that. Not again. You don’t get to give up, leave it all on me. I won’t, and you can’t make me! We work through this together, God damn it! Look at me!”  
  
She commenced slapping at him but it was the crying that hurt. He never could bear her crying. Soul told him it was all his fault and that was certainly no news and no help either and he couldn’t even wish himself rid of the fucking thing because he acknowledged he was pretty well blind without it--do things like decide to dispatch the fledges wholesale, have a new Dalton turned, all blithe and confident. Without it came things like the demon’s eager submission to that Rayne and the orgy of feeding wherever it was he’d been. And the unendurable chasm of distance from Buffy.  
  
Demon, it wanted to fight back against the pain, lash out and make it stop, never mind how. Soul told him any idiot would have made a better job of protecting Buffy than he’d done and now it would all fall apart and be worse than if he’d never begun. Territorial warfare on the streets of Sunnydale and the Hellmouth open again, vamps and others drifting in from a hundred miles roundabout, more than Buffy could ever deal with, and all of it his doing, his fault. Trapped between them with noplace to stand.  
  
Seemed he’d lost some time there because he was struggling on the porch just short of the brightness and had an arm cocked to belt Bit, clinging to his knees, and of course that was wrong so he didn’t and everything whirling and then suddenly he was in the kitchen leaning on the counter there and Buffy had cut herself and was telling him to feed from her and he recoiled because that was wrong too, must never do that again, not if she didn’t love him, and some more spinning and he was someplace dark and quiet except there was small music somewhere, so small as to almost be silence, and he was breathing, which was stupid and useless, so he stopped.  
  
“Hey, evil undead,” came a casual voice, “as long as you’re down here, make yourself useful. Yeah, Spike, I’m talking to you. Hold this door while I get the hinges set. Come on, you’re paying for it, so the least you can do is lend a hand.”  
  
Spike couldn’t get his mind around that, why his paying for it should oblige him to do the work, but _hold the door_ , that he could take in. Guessed he must be back down in the basement and not even token chains anymore to remind him to take care, only the bracelets still there. He rubbed at them uneasily, frowning, because he was hungry and he didn’t think he’d lost so much time as that. And of course Harris was only prey to the demon, food on the hoof and nearby, could smell him and sense him perfectly plain though all his eyes rendered was the heat-blur of hunting sight, which let him know that his demon aspect was ascendant and manifest, the demon running things because Spike was all unfocused and useless.  
  
But he could hold a door, once his hands had been guided to it. So he did that, distracting himself with keeping it steady. Demon couldn’t make him lunge aside and take the unwary food like it wanted to.  
  
Mike feeding on him: that was why he was in blood-debt. So that was all right, then: he’d puzzled out the sense of it.  
  
He winced at the noise of the drill, close by his ear, but otherwise stayed still because he could do that. Not do anything right but at least not do anything wrong.  
  
“You can let go now,” Harris’ voice commented quietly, almost a question there but Spike didn’t understand anything but the words and obediently made his hands open. The door stayed in place, so it must be fastened, hinged, something. No more need of holding. As he turned away, Harris added, “Come on, we’ll get the other one now. Finish up. Then Wills can get ‘em both magicked tight, right?”  
  
Spike felt himself taken by the arm (hot human hands) and steered, cool dirt underfoot and the smell of raw earth and the demon leaning closer and ready to bite but Spike pulled away, stumbling aside into the dirt wall and down on his knees there and Harris _much_ too close, bending to him, and noplace deeper to hide that would let him in. So Spike shoved: a small violence to prevent a larger one. Not that he had any affection for Harris but the witch did, Willow, and Buffy too, some, so Spike had therefore always exempted the oaf from what he otherwise would have done to him, consulting only his own inclinations.  
  
“What’s your problem here, Spike?” Harris inquired, not nearly as nervous as he should be, well within striking distance of a game-faced vampire huddled on the ground. Spike knew himself to be totally pathetic if not even Harris was afraid of him anymore. “Thought you were all into making yourself useful these days. Getting Casa Summers safer than safe. Keeping the streets free of obvious mayhem. Helping Buffy out with her class. Nice tame bagged blood and everything. Soul even back, they tell me. Regular Boy Scout, right? So be useful: hold the door so I can set the hinges and then the lock plate.” Again leaning close, Harris gave him a light punch on the shoulder. Spike bared fangs and snarled, braced and ready for a second, then sagging at the recollection that Harris was protected and not to be taken or even flashed out at. Mustn’t do that. Mustn’t make things worse than he already had. Despite himself he was breathing again and grabbing at the bracelets to remind himself. One broke and fell off. Everything broke. Everything twisted tighter and tighter…then went helplessly slack.  
  
“Get off your lazy butt, fangless, and be some help around here,” Harris demanded, nudging him with a boot. “Got to get that door set before something that’s actually evil gets in. Come on. Hold the door.”  
  
You’d almost think Harris was trying to provoke him, and even Harris couldn’t be that stupid, could he?  
  
But Harris was right: the door at the end of the tunnel needed to be set and shut and secure against the dark. Spike remembered that and didn’t need to puzzle out why because his sense of threat was overwhelming. The people he loved were in terrible danger that he’d put them into and was incapable of keeping from them. Wrong, useless, guilty, and rightly unloved. The least he could do was hold the door in place.  
  
Exhaustedly he pushed to his feet and followed the blood-red blur that was Harris down the tunnel.  
  
**********  
  
“God, he’s spooky,” said Xander, shuddering and rubbing his arms as if against cold, standing in the front room’s door arch to deliver his report. “Game-faced the whole time and itching to come at me, trying so hard not to that he’d shove his face into the dirt rather than look my way. That is one totally screwed-up vampire.”  
  
“Tell us something we _don’t_ know,” commented Dawn scathingly, glumly hugging her knees.  
  
Buffy, sitting next to Dawn on the couch, said nothing. They were none of them in any danger from Spike. Hadn’t been for ages and on some level, even Xander knew it, to volunteer to see what kind of response he could prod out of the profoundly withdrawn vampire.  
  
“Couldn’t get him to talk,” Xander continued, “but he’s listening OK. Give him an order in words of one syllable and he can take it in, do it. About like Bruno, in my crew. I thought maybe giving him something tangible to latch onto might help. But….” Xander’s shrug said the rest.  
  
Dawn judged, “It’s the goddam soul, that’s what it is. It’s punishing him for putting it away, just when he was trying so hard to keep everything balanced. It’s not fair!”  
  
“I actually feel sorry for the creep,” Xander confessed with a wry expression. “And you did not just hear me say that. But I never figured he’d get as far as he has, under harness, so to speak. Not our well-known poster boy for attention deficit hijinks. I expected maybe a week of good intentions, token efforts, and then he’d get drunk or into some brawl and blow it all off, not just keep plugging at it.”  
  
Willow, who’d come in on the tail end of that, commented soberly, “Vampires obsess. He took that as his obsession and threw absolutely everything he had into it. Including us. Since Rayne broke that connection, he hasn’t been able to latch onto it again for some reason. I wish I understood why he started it to begin with, since he doesn’t want it. I’ve seen him up there--more than anybody, I think. At the factory. And it’s a chore. He doesn’t enjoy it.” Tight-lipped, she shook her head. “Oh, I’ve set the wards. For magical purposes, the tunnel is part of the house, and nothing with unfriendly intentions is gonna want to get near it, much less be able to come in. I’ve sealed the doors to the frames and the frames to the bedrock. It’s as secure as I know how to make it.” She crossed to the weapons chest and sat down on it, looking discouraged.  
  
“I’ll get him a new watch,” Dawn announced. “That might help, don’t you think? Buffy?”  
  
“If you want,” Buffy responded, her thoughts elsewhere. Rising, she said, “I’ll start supper. Xander, you staying?”  
  
“And miss the wonders of lukewarm Thai take-out? You betcha!”  
  
Buffy nodded and went off to the kitchen. Spaghetti, she thought, since there’d be four of them, Giles having taken his jet-lagged self back to the motel. Spaghetti was always good for quantity. She rose on tiptoe to inspect the contents of the freezer: she always made extra garlic bread for Spike--  
  
She leaned hard against the refrigerator as a pang struck her, strong as a knife in the gut.  
  
Vamps were killing and turning people, doing their usual vamp thing…under Spike’s authority and on Spike’s orders. Maybe more discreetly than before, not in the streets and scaring the horses. But it was still going on, all the same. And always would, as long as there were vamps in Sunnydale. The turning of the new Dalton had crystallized uneasiness she’d been able to keep formless and unacknowledged until then. And she’d been implicitly condoning it, turning a blind eye. Because what was the alternative? What alternative had Spike left her?  
  
He’d acknowledged the responsibility and offered, for the hundred-nth time, to let her stake him. He knew. And certainly knew, by now, she’d never take him up on that offer. It was unspeakable, unthinkable. But the offer hadn’t been made cynically, not considering it’d been followed by a blind bolt for the porch. Suicide by Slayer; and absent that, by sunlight. He’d rather be dust than try to sort out the ramifications and the loose ends in which he’d left her entangled.  
  
Tomorrow midnight, sweeps should resume. Tuesday, there was supposed to be a class: Anya had somehow pulled strings with the Chamber of Commerce and maybe others, calling in favors, to get the use of the workout room at the Civic Center. Spike’s active, sane presence was crucial to both of these. Without him, they’d collapse. Then the fallout would begin.  
  
He’d gotten her into this. No way would she tolerate his not helping them get out of it. And trying to tempt him with hot garlic bread was so not gonna do the job!  
  
And sobbing on the fridge’s Matte Ivory enamel wasn’t either.  
  
Impatiently wiping her eyes on a paper towel it was convenient to blow her nose with after, she returned to the den, collected Dawn’s cell phone, and made a call. That done, she returned to making supper and fed the ravening multitudes. As they were finishing, she took the plate of extra garlic bread out of the oven where it’d been left to stay crunchy and warm and took it down to the basement.  
  
Spike looked asleep, curled up small on the lawn chair pads in his grief posture that she’d seen a lot more of than she ever wanted to. Wrists thrust between his knees, trying to manacle himself with his own body: that was new, she thought aridly. Still game-faced. She’d never known him to sleep like that. Some comfort in it, maybe. Like the rocking, before. But he was inert now. If he was aware of her, it was too much trouble to stir or show acknowledgement.  
  
Somehow knowing he wouldn’t touch it, she still thumped the plate down on the floor in easy reach, then went to the tunnel door no longer coyly concealed behind the screen and shot back the bolts: this door wasn’t made to be opened from the outside.  
  
Lighting her way with a flashlight, she trudged down the tunnel and opened the door there. As directed, Mike was waiting outside. She gave him points for prompt.  
  
“Come in,” Buffy said formally. “You’re welcome here.”  
  
“Don’t need to do that,” Mike complained, evidently annoyed by empty gestures, sliding past her. “Had an invite, been here before, you recall?”  
  
Slamming each bolt home again, Buffy replied coldly, “The whole house has been re-spelled. All invitations are revoked. Spike can go out but he won’t be able to come back without a fresh invitation. Tell him, so he’s not surprised. Doesn’t take it wrong. Which of course he will anyway.” She led Mike back up the tunnel, ignoring the alarms the awareness of a not-Spike vamp close behind her set off, and showed Spike to him in the garlic reek of the basement. Nobody moved for awhile. Gnawing at the edge of a thumb, Buffy demanded, “What’s wrong with him?”  
  
“That Rayne,” said Mike at once. “Took him out of himself. He ain’t got back.”  
  
“Not good enough,” Buffy snapped. “I’ve had vamp lore up to yo, and I want an explanation. I know he’s not back, I can see that. I want _why_.”  
  
Mike looked around at her and didn’t say anything.  
  
It’d probably been too much to expect, that Mike could explain it to her. Vamps weren’t into subtleties, nuances. Not into relationships, not really, beyond dominance and competition, spaces for their own egos to bloom.  
  
Willow said Spike’s sense of himself had been injured, and what the hell did that mean? Dawn seemed to think it was the lack of the watch: that Spike couldn’t tell time properly without it, when all vamps knew dawn and dusk with precision, to the second, with no need of watches. Watches were alien: for appointments, agendas, not the unfolding _now_ that the new Dalton would wake to experience. Along with the crazy hunger of a fledge. And the creature that’d turned him was standing beside her, unrepentant. Proud even of his restraint, his control, to be able to do such a thing, if Spike had been right about that.  
  
Probably was: Spike had been interpreting vamps for her for a long time, trying to make her understand, and she never would. His word for such things would have to be good enough.  
  
They were what they were. It was either dust them out of hand, where they stood, or accept that. Nothing between. There weren’t gonna be any compromises. Or any accommodation, without Spike there to enforce it.  
  
She looked at Mike: wary, self-contained, comfortably silent, with no need to speak to her; without the human need to reach out, offer explanations, make contact. Impervious to her regard. As long as she didn’t come up with a stake, he’d tolerate her company and even respond to her summons, for Spike’s sake. But she had no relationship with this creature. None at all. Their only connection was through Spike.  
  
She felt it--the alienness of it. Spike was tame, compared to this. He’d made himself tame. For her. Until he couldn’t do that anymore. Sleeping in his demon.  
  
“Take him up to Willy’s,” she directed abruptly, “or wherever you want, wherever you think is best. Get him drunk. Start a fight, get him into it. Or if that doesn’t work, if he won’t, then beat the crap out of him yourself.”  
  
“Don’t need me for that.”  
  
“From me, he’d take it,” Buffy responded bitterly.  
  
“Maybe. Maybe,” Mike conceded, finally turning his attention back to Spike. “You giving up your claim on him?”  
  
“Never!”  
  
“That Rayne, he’s marked him. But I’ll see to that. By me, you still got first claim.”  
  
“All right,” said Buffy, not sure what she was agreeing to or why Mike had felt obliged to tell her that. Finally not caring as long as she got the results she wanted.  
  
“And you take the forbidding off Dawn,” Mike added, and Buffy was startled. “She ain’t mad at me no more. Talking to me again. Ain’t nothing gonna happen to her except what she wants, not when I’m close by. So no need of a forbidding. And…she’s seventeen now.”  
  
“All right,” Buffy said again, stifling uneasiness. “But you hurt her, or turn her, I’ll come after you and you’ll be dust on the breeze!”  
  
“Sure. If you could,” agreed Mike indifferently.  
  
“She’s my sister! Mine!”  
  
“She’s her own. Spike made me see how that was. And Dawn herself, of course. Nobody has rights over her except the Lady, and I ain’t yet seen there’s anything to be done about that. Just so it’s clear, then.”  
  
“All right,” Buffy said a third time and made herself turn and go up the stairs, surrendering Spike into the custody and care of his claimed childe, hoping that was what Spike needed now, that she was doing the right thing.  
  
She had to get him back. Whatever it cost.  
  
**********  
  
Obviously the first thing was to get him some replacement boots: he couldn’t be seen in public with his bare shins hanging out like some wino. Since it was Friday, the mall stores would still be open, but Mike didn’t head that way. Best place for boots, in his opinion, was the Bronze. Parking behind some crates in the broad back alley, he ducked in long enough to get Spike a fifth of decent whiskey to keep him company on the bike, then went back inside to make a more leisurely appraisal. Choosing out a rowdy biker everybody would be glad to see gone, he picked a fight, broke some furniture before taking the fight outside, and presently had a fairish pair of boots to try on his charge, all sorts of straps and rings, as well as a gaudy shirt to go over the undistinguished black T.  
  
Spike wasn’t cooperating but he wasn’t objecting, either. So maybe that was good, Mike thought, and maybe it wasn’t. Anyway the boots seemed to fit well enough: Mike thought he had a good eye for such things, and he knew Spike had much smaller feet than you’d think, getting one in the gut.  
  
One of Mike’s T-shirts had the picture of a snarling Chihuahua with the sentiment, _Not the size of the dog in the fight, the size of the fight in the dog._ That was Spike. What he lacked in size and weight, he more than made up for with sneakiness, skill, and passion. Mike had seen him take on vamps four or five at a time and dust them all, with verve and glee. For a number of reasons, Mike didn’t like the idea of the Slayer’s final command, to beat the crap out of Spike. One bad possibility was that he’d lose. The other bad possibility was that he wouldn’t.  
  
He’d had a couple of showdown fights with Spike so far, testing the limits, and hadn’t yet come out on top. But other than being awake and balancing with the bike, which was pretty much automatic, Spike had yet to say a word or take good notice of anything, which upped Mike’s chances considerably. A fair chance he could have the fight over before Spike had noticed it had begun.  
  
The bad side of that was that it wouldn’t mean anything, any more than if he’d jumped Spike drunk or asleep. The other bad side was that it would. More than one Master Vampire had been dusted in his sleep, choosing the wrong sentry or the wrong bed partner, and sporting or not, they were just as dead.  
  
Mike, the ex-mercenary and expert sniper, had never much concerned himself about fair odds. Nothing counted but the mortal practicalities: who was still moving at the end of things. But now, the idea of taking Spike down without Spike even knowing about it made him feel itchy, uneasy in his skin somehow.  
  
 _Table that_ , Mike thought, and instead considered where to go next. Then he noticed that the bottle of J.D. was still capped: listlessly held, likely for no more reason than Mike had closed Spike’s hand around it, figuring he’d do the rest. Well, that wasn’t gonna get the job done.  
  
A fifth, that was just for openers: not enough to get drunk on. Uncapping the bottle himself, Mike downed some thoughtfully although he preferred rum--the thicker, the better. He smiled at the memory of Willow’s rum punch, compared with which Jack was thin, sour tea. But good enough, he supposed, if you liked that sort of thing. Certainly felt warm and got your motor running.  
  
But it wasn’t food; and Mike thought Spike had a starved look that said he hadn’t put back what Mike had taken from him last night. That was just downright stupid in a house full of warm humans with heartbeats let along bagged blood delivered twice a day, if you please; but Spike could be stupid about the most peculiar things. He’d been muy weird about feeding as long as Mike had known him. Deal with that first, then. Then more drinking, when the liquor had something more substantial to float on the top of.  
  
He’d always wanted to hunt with Spike anyway. This was his chance.  
  
The current approved prey was druggies and pushers, but Mike was wary of getting a heavy dose of unknown chemicals with such a meal and did his cruising elsewhere. He liked the hospitals. Had two, just in his own assigned territory--the only thing more numerous, in Sunnydale, was cemeteries. Mercy General and St. Elizabeth's. He'd spent whole evenings observing, learning their rhythms and their ways. People coming and going at all hours, and some incoming injured that could be diverted and just be speeding the inevitable. Nurse’s aides were also nice, every now and again, as a change from the comatose, diseased, and dying.  
  
So he immediately noticed the Mercy Gen candy-striper, wearing a white cable-knit cardigan over her pastel blouse, waiting in the lit bus enclosure at the front of the parking lot. Usually he’d just invite one for a ride, but that was no good since he already had someone at pillion.  
  
Scrunching up his forehead worriedly, he pulled up to the enclosure and asked hoarsely, “Are you a doctor?” Over her flustered _Who, me?_ reaction, he continued, “Think my buddy got some bad stuff, but I can’t find the emergency entrance. Been around this frickin’ parking lot at least a dozen times and I can’t see where it lets off. Can you help me?” Throwing different signals at her too fast for her to question any of them, looking all earnest and dumb, he edged the kickstand down so the bike wouldn’t fall over, then pointed urgently at the Emergency Entrance sign, at least big enough to be advertising a motel, demanding, “See?” to direct her attention that way.  
  
No more was needed: he had her. Big enough to fold her to him, all seeming romantic if anybody bothered to notice, which nobody did. Noticing wasn’t common in Sunnydale.  
  
He himself was fed up fine, what with last night and then the new Dalton, today, even though he’d had to give some back. So he didn’t need to drain the nicely terrified girl completely. Only to the point where her heart started to falter and she was limp in his supporting arms. He could stop, distract his demon the same way he’d distracted the girl and enforce his will on both. Choose to kill or not, proving he was in control, not his demon. Not a fledge any longer.  
  
He tucked the limp girl neatly back on the bench in a pose of sleep, more or less. Shift change was in less than fifteen minutes: she’d be found and all handy for care and a few transfusions, everything the way Spike would like it, nobody dead and therefore no reason to refuse.  
  
He opened his left forearm and presented it, saying formally, “Sire.”  
  
That got Spike’s dim attention. No bagged blood smelled like that, with all the mingled flavors of respect and terror and fresh, desperate, vigorous life. Wouldn’t stay good long, not like Slayer blood in that way, but for a little while, Spike could feed direct from him and have all the good of it.  
  
Couldn’t turn away from a thing like that, true tribute blood; and Spike didn’t. But he didn’t just plow right in, neither, the way Mike expected. The teeth exploring the wound Mike had made stayed blunt, and eyes slowly blinking were deep indigo blue in the harsh sodium lighting over the bus kiosk. The suction became deep and regular, and Mike leaned against the bike, feeling a little drifty. Then he fumbled in the right-hand saddlebag for the bottle, got it open, and finished it off, passing that along, too.  
  
Would have been too complicated, maybe impossible, to shove Spike into going after the girl himself. But maybe, Mike thought lazily, this was better. A communion. A sort of hazy rapture. A sacrifice. A gift. So many things, all twined together, for the blood to mean. He and Spike leaned heavily together, Mike rather dizzy from the transaction. The wound was closing. Spike licked it clean, accepting the natural term.  
  
“Wouldn’t have been good much longer anyway,” Mike found himself commenting sadly.  
  
“Was good,” Spike responded, head bent against Mike’s biceps. “Was real.” At last he looked up. “Where’s the bottle got to?”  
  
“Dead soldier,” said Mike, and pitched it overhand as hard and as far as he could. He heard it smash satisfyingly on a windshield in the MD RESERVED section, the sound immediately followed by the yelping indignant squeals and warbling siren of the vehicle's alarm. “Could be more, if you want.”  
  
“Yeah. Let’s do that, then.”  
  
**********  
  
“Shut up,” Mike said tightly.  
  
“But it’s true,” Sue said, leaning boozily on an elbow to stare into his eyes, “and you know it. You don’t need him. With all his restrictions and complications, he only gets in your way, slows you down. You’re a Master in your own right now. Don’t have to run around all the time licking his feet or else get pounded on. What if he takes another crazy spell and takes it into his head to dust you?”  
  
Spike wouldn’t do that. Had too much invested by way of time and teaching to end it in a casual puff of dust. He’d given Mike the watch. “Shut up.”  
  
Sue attended to trying to sip her pink drink through the stirrer, under the impression it was a straw, still shooting him telling glances from time to time. Friday, past midnight, at the Bronze, was too noisy to hear yourself think. Mike was getting a headache and was in an increasingly foul mood.  
  
He’d opted for Willy’s, but Spike wouldn’t get off the bike. Wanted noise and dancing, not an assassination attempt. Not even a fight that could easily get out of hand in a demon bar that actively encouraged fighting. Could turn in a flash into a pitched battle, with only him and Spike doing the pitching on the side of the colors.  
  
He didn’t like Spike being all cautious and prudent. Didn’t like him ducking a fight which in fact was the whole point of the outing. Mike had collected four of the crew by the theater in their usual spot, trolling for prey in the departing rush, for an escort in force, but even then Spike wasn’t satisfied. Stepped down from the bike and started walking toward the Bronze, face golden-pale as he lit a cigarette, so Mike had no option except to trail after, feeling like an idiot.  
  
Once inside, though, Spike took a corner booth away at the back and went blank-eyed and comatose again, reeking misery. Not even drinking much, just watching the dancers as though they were all Buffy and all had dumped him.  
  
Shouldn’t have never told him about the general disinvite at Casa Summers. Only factual, but he’d taken it personally, just as the Slayer had said he would. It galled Mike to admit that in some ways, Buffy knew Spike better than he did.  
  
So he’d had an assortment from the pill stash fetched down from the factory to cut some of the gloom. On a free night, nobody much up there, except for Huey tied down with keeping watch over the new Dalton and Emil stuck with guard duty. So Mike had picked Sue to summon, to bring the pills. Figured she’d be all excited and bubbly, allowed to leave the lair for her first permitted public outing, even though she flashed in and out of trueface faster than a yellow caution light. The corner was dark and if she kept her back to the room, nobody was apt to notice. Bought her a couple-few drinks, for a treat. Had been fucking her on and off, mostly because she was there when he had nothing better to do, but women always tried to make something personal out of that and she’d been mouthing off lately about being his exclusively, using his minimal interest to scare off her least-liked partners. Women did that. Specially fledges, who needed all the leverage they could get, indiscriminately used by anybody who was older and stronger, that they didn’t dare say No to. Mike didn’t grudge her that and hadn’t disputed her claims. Showed her a bit of favor, even: bringing her things, a nurse once all to herself as a change from the bagged blood she didn’t get her full share of anyway, elbowed aside by the male fledges. Didn’t cost him all that much and she had energetic ways of showing her appreciation.  
  
Now Spike was drunk and manic, having a shouting, arm-waving argument with the bass player between sets over who was the greatest jazz singer ever. And Mike was drunk and sullen, with Sue gone all Lady Macbeth on him, on the strength of Spike’s ducking out on his responsibilities and Mike’s turning the new Dalton. Change was in the air, electric, and Mike didn’t like it. Yet it pulled at him. Because what Sue said was true.  
  
If Spike couldn’t straighten out and get back to normal soon, all he’d put together and held together by main force was gonna start coming unglued. And Digger would capitalize on every weakness, maybe even commit to the attack in force that’d been simmering ever since the sweeps began. Nobody liked the Sunday through Wednesday curfew on the prime downtown hunting district. A fight over that was coming, of a certainty: they all knew it. The only question was when.  
  
Since Rayne had taken him, Spike the Master of Sunnydale was swiftly deteriorating into Spike the liability. And the smart thing would be to get him out of the way as fast as possible and assert and establish Mike’s own authority before strong opposition could organize. He had one foot solidly planted: in Spike’s absence, Huey and the crew obeyed him. All he had to do was set the other foot down hard and assume the stance. Quick, while there was still a place to stand.  
  
“If you switch sides now,” Sue pointed out, giving the straw pointed and intense suction, “while you still have something to bargain with, I bet Digger would grant you a real good territory. He likes you.”  
  
“Shut up.” Mike knocked back his drink and poured another, scowling.  
  
He liked Spike well enough. But not enough to go down with him if he failed, which now seemed increasingly likely. He’d see to Rayne, certain sure: couldn’t afford to have a mage running around loose with a yen for dominating the strongest vamp he could find. Just common sense, really, to do him before his whim turned in some different direction. Hit him before he saw anything coming.  
  
Wandering back from the bandstand as the musicians got ready for another set, Spike had his head lifted and his eyes shut as though listening to music nobody else could hear. More of the random crazy. Mike pushed the bottle toward him, checking that the escort were still around and paying good attention. Each was ready for his inspection, meeting his eyes in the intermittent flash of the rotating mirror globe overhead. A lot more alert than Spike, still standing rapt in his own private world.  
  
Then Spike’s eyes opened, slow and dark and sad, gazing steadily down into Mike’s. And Mike knew without question that Spike knew everything Sue had been saying, all that Mike had been thinking, down to the least detail. And accepted it.  
  
Intolerable.  
  
Bolted down, the table was only wrenched half loose when Mike shoved it out of his way and came up at Spike. Full of rage and indignation and a dozen other conflicted emotions, Mike knocked Spike halfway across the room, disrupting the dancers, setting off a panic. Slapping away converging bouncers, Mike kept going, determined to pound Spike into the floor, make him fight back, force some unnamed acknowledgement from him. Not knowing what else to do, the four vamps in the colors slid in and started clearing the space, trying to keep interlopers from butting in. Plowing through the confused brawl like a truck, Mike paid no attention, focused only on Spike, who was simply waiting for him, letting it happen, which absolutely wasn’t to be borne. Mike pitched him into the bandstand, musicians and instruments flying everywhere and a huge feedback drone erupting from the sound system, reverberating in the bones. Mike went into one of his rare battle flashbacks, translating the crack of breaking chairs into small arms fire and the harsher reports of AK-47s, the flashing, broken light as tracers and grenade bursts, and the surrounding swirl of fighting bodies as the fierce mayhem of direct hand-to-hand. Whatever he touched, he broke.  
  
“He has it open,” murmured Spike’s voice in his ear, close as a lover’s, quiet and casual.  
  
“What?” Mike stopped with an arm cocked, ready to pound down again into Spike’s belly.  
  
“The box. Has the box open, and he’s playing with the Stone. Can’t you hear it singing?”  
  
Going still within himself, Mike realized that he could. Not the voice of the Hellmouth of old but very like, a shrill threnody that ran up and down his nerves like rats, at once disruptive and attractive. Not quite a sound or a scent, nothing known with the senses but felt deeply, everywhere. An Influence. A door cracked ajar on wild, chaotic energies like his vision of battle. Feeding his rage that went cold, separated from it; feeding his confusion, that scattered like dry leaves the moment he identified the influence and knew it as outer, not within himself. His demon was all frantic and disrupted with it, but Mike stood apart, listening. He could do that now.  
  
“Always thought it would be Buffy,” Spike continued dreamily. “But that’s all right. You’ll do well enough. Might as well get on with it, then. Best, all round.”  
  
Mike couldn’t hold the clarity: the rest came roaring back, sweeping over him. Utterly overwhelmed and deep in his demon, he found himself clutching Spike close and sobbing into his chest, inconsolable. In desperate need of his sire’s close presence and reassurance that the ambient craziness could not unweave him wholly into flapping tatters. Needing his protection and wisdom and strength.  
  
Besides, if he’d actually gone ahead and done anything terminally bad to Spike, Dawn would never have forgiven him.


	15. Convergence

Dawn took one glance at the map Willow held, with its single red dot, and grabbed Buffy’s arm. “Let me do it.” Cutting off whatever protest Buffy was about to make, Dawn persisted, “He won’t freak, with me. I’m going.” Still, she waited until her non-question was answered by Buffy’s turning aside: tacit permission.  
  
Mike the imperturbable was pacing. He knew, but he wouldn’t say: at a guess, he’d promised not to. Freakin’ big secret: Spike was hid out at abandoned Casa Mike, all of a block away. Mike responded to Dawn’s indignant glance with an apologetic dip of his head and didn’t say anything, which he was very good at.  
  
Dawn sprinted the distance in a couple of minutes, then hung up outside, trying to figure the best approach to a suicidally depressed vampire. The usual, she decided: be annoying enough to get him talking and then wing it from there.  
  
She opened the door. Cautiously, in case he was right inside, since it was still light out.  
  
Once she’d determined Spike hadn’t returned to the factory last night, Buffy had wanted him to come back under his own steam, of his own choice, and forbidden a direct hunt, opting for putting verbal thumbscrews to Mike, instead. Only when it was plain that was going nowhere had she given the OK for Willow to do a locator spell.  
  
Casa Mike: practically next door, Casa Spike having been fire-bombed and burned to rubble. Not hard to interpret: he could have come home, but hadn’t. The whole invite mixup, maybe. Didn’t want to wake up a rightful resident at five in the morning to let him stumble in, formally invited. They’d both been pretty drunk, according to Mike, and Dawn didn’t doubt it. The uppers, too, which ensured a hard crash, coming down. He’d likely still be asleep.  
  
He wasn’t sacked out on the couch in the dusty living room. He wasn’t in the kitchen in back, either. Nor tucked up in any of the ground-level closets. There was a stairway up and a stairway down. On a hunch, she took the stairway down, flicking the light switch futilely (power finally cut off for non-payment, or maybe just a blown bulb), then taking the steps sideways, bent low to look.  
  
He was sitting on the floor in the inside corner, farthest from the high windows. Back bent, arms slack at his sides, head bowed right into the corner. Made Dawn think of a punished doll. And not expecting anybody to see him that way, so that pose, that was just for him. The way he most felt like being. Fairly grim, she thought, approaching at a cautious sidle in case he was asleep.  
  
But he wasn’t. “Bit, you ever do like I said, get Red to fix you some different anchor?”  
  
She leaned against the wall where she could see his profile. “Nope. Not gonna, either.”  
  
He didn’t move or open his eyes. At least he wasn’t rocking, and sounded sane. “You should. Nearly was gone a couple times last night, never thought till after about how you’d be tied into it. Sorry. For not thinking.”  
  
She slid down against the wall and hugged her knees. Taking a page from Mike’s book, she said nothing. If Spike felt like talking, she wanted to listen. Sometimes silence drew better than questions.  
  
“’F you’re hangin’ on ‘cause you think that’ll make me careful, it don’t work like that. I don’t think it out that far. Can’t, I guess. Don’t, anyway. So don’t you consider me, that don’t signify. You just consider you. ‘F you don’t want to talk to Red about it, some reason, I’ll do it.”  
  
“When are you coming home?”  
  
Long silence. Dawn waited. “Dunno,” he said finally in a colorless voice. “Some time, I expect. When I’m wanted for something or other.”  
  
“You’re wanted _now,_ Spike. They’re having a meeting about what to do about the sweep, tonight. They--”  
  
Spike interrupted quietly, “I’m no use for that,” like it was an obvious fact past arguing.  
  
“Why? On account of the soul?”  
  
“Oh, I can _talk_ well enough,” Spike responded, with the first edge of bitterness he’d allowed himself. “Just can’t _do_ nothing about it, not of any use. An’ she’d want to know why, always wanting to know why, and that’s not on the agenda. Not far’s I’m concerned.”  
  
“I want to know why. You might have noticed,” Dawn mentioned. “Mike’s sitting in, so you don’t have to worry about giving anybody vampire cooties. That’s already all taken care of.”  
  
“Let Mike sort it, then. He’s better off if I don’t mix in.”  
  
“He’s pacing. Doing his trademark strong, silent routine. Waiting for you.”  
  
Spike looked around sharply, yellow-eyed. “He tell you I’d laired up here?”  
  
“The soul of discretion,” Dawn denied, hands lifted virtuously.  
  
“How, then? Oh. Had Red hunt me. Expect that Rayne, he can do that too, now….”  
  
“Murder at sundown, news at eleven?”  
  
“Got enough of my kit now, likely track me easy.” Another long silence: working out the likelihood of an attack in force, here in this basement, as soon as it was dark. Another fire-bombing maybe, Dawn thought. “Have to have that talk with Red, I guess,” Spike decided, and stiffly unfolded, bracing a hand on the wall. Still had the brass bangle on his right wrist, she noticed. But the other one was gone.  
  
Following along, Dawn figured it out far enough to know the tricky part wasn’t getting him to come--it would be getting him to stay. Whatever was coming, he’d want to draw it away, have it be him alone. And the necessary preliminary to that was cutting her loose: a strong enough reason to make him face the dreaded _why_.  
  
Of course it wouldn’t go that way, but if she could follow his thought, she could get ahead of him and block him when it would matter. It was enough, now, to have started him moving.  
  
Except that he opened the front door and walked right out into the late sunlight. No preparation, no blanket, nothing. Dawn was frozen in the doorway, waiting for him to burst into flame.  
  
He didn’t. Catching a quick gulp of breath, Dawn saw he was unhurriedly aiming for the speckled shade of the nearest tree that still had most of its leaves. Slamming the door behind her, she sprinted to the tree and grabbed him there in a strangling hug.  
  
“Dammit, give a girl some warning! You just scared me--”  
  
“Sorry,” he responded reflexively. “Didn’t think about it. Just how it is now.”  
  
She somehow kept herself from saying the dreaded _why_ , just held on harder, and was rewarded with his cheek against her hair.  
  
“Sorry, Bit. Didn’t mean to scare you. Didn’t think….”  
  
“You owe me seventy-five cents,” Dawn announced in a dire voice, pulling back to look him in the eyes (currently pale blue).  
  
He did the head tilt, puzzled, waiting for an explanation.  
  
“Every time you say ‘sorry,’ you owe me a quarter.”  
  
“Says who?”  
  
“Says me.” Studying his face, she touched his cheek with experimental fingertips. Warm. And so were his hands. Maybe a little pink--she couldn’t be sure. “New parlor trick?”  
  
He shrugged. “Just noticed, is all. Some of it….” He frowned, searching for words. “Think some of it just…radiates. Like I’m channeling it. And the rest heals, fast as it burns. Long as I’m fed up good, anyway. Or that’s how it’s seemed. Long as the sun’s low and I don’t push it too far. Feels something like running a fever, as best I recall, which isn’t much. Minute or so, though, it’s gone.”  
  
She laid her palm on his forehead, then took both his hands. Cool again. “Even for a vamp, you’re a freak,” she reported, and he smiled slightly, waiting for her to finish her inspection. In his way, quieter than Mike…and that was very strange. She wasn’t sure she approved. “What’s the next mark?”  
  
“Tree at the corner should be in range. ‘F it’s not, I’ll tuck into that shadow by the big bush.” He pointed, and Dawn confirmed the strategy. They zigzagged together from mark to mark, Dawn resisting the impulse to run, to drag him. He kept a steady pace, and she kept hold of his hand, feeling the heat build and then dissipate.  
  
“This is so neat!” she couldn’t resist telling him when they reached the large shadow of the house that had formerly been the neighbor of Casa Spike. “Think we can make the back porch all in one go?”  
  
Spike considered the distance: the whole width of the yard of Casa Summers, plus a little. “From the hedge, maybe.”  
  
“Wait--I’ll get a blanket, something. I want to see if you can do it. If you can’t, just drop and I’ll cover you up till you’re cool again, OK?” Not waiting for any argument, she dashed to the break in the hedge, then on to the back porch and hammered on the door until Buffy came to let her in. Running for the stairs, she called, “Everybody onto the sidewalk, you gotta see this! No, Mike: you stay! I’ll tell you afterward.” Grabbing the chenille spread off her bed, she raced down, grabbing up ends and fistfuls of trailing fringe to avoid tripping herself, ordering, “Quiet, and watch the back hedge, OK?”  
  
Dropping off the back porch, she went four long paces out into the yard and shook out the spread, figuring if Spike got into trouble, it would be nearer to the house than to the hedge. She looked around to check that the audience was in position with a clear line of sight, then called, “OK, Spike, I’m ready! Come on.”  
  
He came through the hedge at the same unhurried stroll, smiling at her as he passed, went up the porch steps, and then locked there, in front of the open door.  
  
She’d forgotten about the disinvite.  
  
Dumping the spread, Dawn ran, took the steps in two jumps, and whirled in the kitchen, blurting breathlessly, “Spike, come in, for God’s sake!”  
  
He came inside vamp-fast and was in the hall before she could turn to face him. _Definitely_ pink, this time. “Cut it a bit fine,” he commented, hugging himself nervously.  
  
“Sorry--I forgot!”  
  
"Down to fifty cents, now: debit you a quarter."  
  
“Bet I make it back within fifteen minutes,” Dawn riposted, going out to retrieve the spread. And encountered the audience, spilling into the yard via the driveway, too impatient to get an explanation to circle back through the house. Pulling up successive heavy drapes of chenille and clutching them against her, Dawn reported Spike’s theory, finishing by fixing Buffy with a gimlet stare. “Now I’ve told you all there is to tell. Don’t ask him why. Don’t ask him _why_ anything. And every _sorry_ costs him a quarter, and I’m keeping count, so don’t bankrupt the corporation, all right? You were right, Buffy: don’t push him. Wait and let him come to you. And that’s really good advice, and I hope you take it. Because otherwise, he’s gonna be gone and you’re gonna be sorry, and we’re talking major money here.”  
  
Clutching the armload of spread, she led the parade back into the house.  
  
*********  
  
Spike was absently patting pockets for a pack of smokes and the lighter and there was nothing, not so much as a matchbook, when he found all the Scoobies gathered around him, smiling in goofy benevolence: fucking puppy had done a trick. Well, he was having none of that, thank you very much. Nobody here he wanted to talk to excepting Red, to get the thing done.  
  
Drunk had cleared nearly all the fog away, he could make her out plain, and was just about to explain about Bit, what had to be done, when Willow informed him brightly, “You’re bronze.”  
  
And the poncy habit kicked in from God knew where and he responded blankly, “Excuse me?”  
  
“You used to be all silver and shadow,” the witch continued, formulating a thesis. “Mirrored, almost. Taking the image of whatever was around you, none of your own. Quicksilver, the cool liquid metal that’s slow death to the touch. That’s why the Mad Hatter was mad: mercury poisoning used to be an occupational disease of hat-makers. But now you’re bronze, a blended metal. Yet one thing all through.”  
  
Head reared back, Spike considered her sternly. “Have you gone completely ‘round the bloody bend?”  
  
“No, you have. And back again.”  
  
Complete nutcase bonkers. Or, he thought uneasily, maybe it was him. That stopped him, made him uncertain. Backing against the staircase wall, he reached out a hand. “Bit…?”  
  
She came to him, quick and graceful, his touchstone. Casually folding fingers into his braceleted hand, she slid between, her back to him to face the confusion and keep it from him. Dawn told the witch, “You’re freaking him. Could we maybe do the fun metal folklore some other time?”  
  
From the back, Buffy’s humorless voice suggested they all reconvene in the front room again, but that was nothing to do with him anymore and he stayed where he was until Willow leaned to start after Harris. Then Spike stepped into her path. “Need you to do a thing.”  
  
“We can talk about it,” Willow offered amiably, “after--”  
  
“Now.”  
  
Willow settled, and after an assessing glance, Dawn evidently found the level of weird acceptable and released his hand. Not about to just leave them to it, though: heading into the kitchen, Dawn commented, “He wants to cut me off. Dawnectomy. I say, first, do no harm. Leave things as they are. So there’s nothing to talk about.”  
  
“’S my soul,” Spike argued, past Willow. Don’t want you hitched to it. Piece you have, you stole, never asked, just latched onto it. I should have rights what’s hitched up to it or not.”  
  
Dawn leaned out, just her head and the hanging scarf of hair, to say, “I didn’t hear any complaints at the time.”  
  
“Doesn’t signify. Connect up to your sis or whatever, up to you, that side of it.” Because the Slayer was no safe connection neither, and that realization had so much that came with it, it hung him up with his eyes shut to not be totally distracted. Hold to the point. He told Willow, “’S a waste, otherwise, an’ she’s just being provoking. Most things, I’d let her have her way. Not this. Needs doing, and needs doing now. Her holding on ain’t gonna change nothing that happens, except to get her hurt too. Cut her loose.”  
  
“You do,” Dawn warned the witch, “and I’ll make you sorry.”  
  
Willow said, “I really don’t like being in the middle of you two arm-wrestling. And I have no idea how to go about doing what you want, Spike. I can loose souls or restore them--I never read anything that tells about de-fractioning them. Giles? A second opinion needed here.”  
  
When the Watcher came mooching out of the front room, hands in pockets, all smooth reserved surface, Spike was almost as startled as if it’d been Angel. It rearranged reality: not anything he thought about, just something he knew beyond question--that the Watcher was gone. That taking care of the Slayer fell solely to Spike now. That guarding her back wasn’t good enough anymore--Spike had to scout ahead, too, and clear the way before her. The task he’d fallen down on, been inadequate to.  
  
The last of the heat dissipated, leaving him cold and still in his surprise.  
  
Regarding him, Giles remarked quietly, “Hello, Spike. I’ve been here several days, but I gather you weren’t in a position to notice. Oddly enough, I came for you. Because of Ethan.”  
  
Spike backed against the wall again but Giles touched him anyway, setting a hand on his shoulder. Spike vibrated under it, with noplace left to back to. Couldn’t just swat the ponce. He was at a loss. He felt his features shift aspect. His throat was tight with the beginnings of a snarl. Dawn came across the hall fast and took his hand again, telling the Watcher, “Being personal pushes the wrong buttons right now. You should know that.”  
  
“I do know that,” Giles said, not budging, continuing his sober inspection of Spike. “I know exactly what buttons it pushes. And I believe it’s important that he know that I do. Spike. You’re not alone in this. In…difficult circumstances, you’ve done very well.”  
  
Spike burst out, “Fucking hell!” and twisted out from under the touch, pulled away from Dawn, heading for the front door. Couldn’t tolerate the Watcher’s pity…or his understanding. Sun was almost gone, he should manage all right. Get someplace fucking else, that was all. Stupid to have laired up so close, but he’d needed that--  
  
Buffy was suddenly at the door, her back against it, blocking his way. Her eyes said she wasn’t about to move, neither.  
  
Boxed between people he couldn’t hit, Spike flung himself up the stairs and out Buffy’s bedroom window onto the roof. Shrouded within clouds now, the sun offered an even light, directionless, everywhere the same. Some low level of burn to exposed skin but Spike processed that automatically, vaulting over the roof peak to descend and crouch at the edge like a gargoyle. He heard, felt, Buffy behind him, relentlessly pursuing. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t want to.  
  
Coming down the low slant to stand beside him, she wordlessly offered a pack of cigarettes and a silver lighter. Bobbing his head in acknowledgement, he took them and shakily lit up.  
  
“It all can be replaced,” she remarked, looking out over the darkening yard. Her scent flowed across him, surrounded him. “All of it except you. Lighters are easy. This--this is hard, though. Why is this so hard?”  
  
“Dunno,” Spike muttered. “Just is. Let the bloody side down, didn’t I? Not nothing to be proud of. Not up to it. Not good for nothing, like this. Can see it but not do it. An’ before, do it all just fine, couldn’t see the way. Or the meaning. Ramifications. Consequences. In short, fucked. For the mongrel bastard freak I am. Can’t go neither forward nor back, can’t stand still. Doesn’t matter, though. Be gone soon, won’t matter.” Heat that felt like the sun’s burning roiled within him and he didn’t know how to shed it. Let it take him, then. Had it coming. Icarus.  
  
Buffy settled down beside him, legs stretched out, feet dangling, and for a long time neither of them said anything. Spike pitched the butt-end and started another, just to have something for his hands to do.  
  
“Never thought I’d ever do this,” Buffy remarked eventually. “Sit with you in the last of the light. Guess I should have known, though. You’re always surprising me. I no sooner say ‘never,’ and you’ve popped up and done it. I shouldn’t be so quick with the ‘never,’ I guess.”  
  
When he chanced a glance, she wasn’t looking at him--both a disappointment and a relief.  
  
After awhile, she commented, “I figured it out, you know. Why you started this. After the Hellmouth was shut, you waited for me to decide what way to go on. And I decided on the Slayer…and you. And the minute we got back, you started this: set the soul aside, began laying the infrastructure. Got Mike sorted, to be your right hand on your side of things. Began pulling away, so I wouldn’t get sucked into it and because you knew parts of it…wouldn’t be things I could accept. It was for me. To help me make Sunnydale a place a Slayer could live in, and be a Slayer with her vampire lover, and maybe not die quite so soon. Building it up from the vamp side of things, that I don’t really want to know about and I guess never will. Knowing better than I could what that would mean and require. It’s been for me.”  
  
“’S always been for you, pet. Made a hash of it, though. ‘M sorry. Gonna be worse now than if I never started.” Spike pitched the second fag, though a good half of it was left. Had to pitch something, and himself off the roof wasn’t an option.  
  
“No,” she responded thoughtfully, “you took it far enough that all the pieces are in place. It hasn’t fallen apart. And it won’t. We can take it from here, I think. Mike and I have been talking today, in our strange, un-talky way. And we’re both willing to try. Want to, actually. Because the dream you had is a good dream, and you brought it far enough that we both can see it. Most of it. Some of it.” She shrugged. “But it can’t work without you. You have to do the hand-off, then come in for the things nobody else can do. Nobody else is the one true heir of the Order of Aurelius. Nobody else commands Digger’s respect…and caution. Nobody else sees the whole of it, what it can be when it’s done and self-sustaining. Giles helped me see that part of it, because I’m blind as a bat when it comes to you. You know that. I look, and all I’m thinking is _Yum, pretty, hot, I want that!_ Which isn’t too helpful for long-range strategy.” Another shrug and a wry smile.  
  
She was so beautiful. Nothing like her ever before or ever again.  
  
Impossible that she not be let down by his failure. But she was forever impossible. Forever surprising him. Forever dear and precious beyond measure.  
  
He’d long since shifted back out of his demon aspect. Not comfortable to him anymore, most of the time, and soul got real indignant when he left his demon with the running of things. But curiously, neither soul nor demon was nagging at him at the moment. Both content and serene, not trying to grind him to powder between them.  
  
 _Bronze_ , he thought, with a glimmer of what Red had been getting at. A true amalgam, not just the disparate pieces. _Bronze. Maybe. Might be._  
  
So right away, he came out with the worst of it: “Can’t keep on like I been doing. Goddam tribute blood, pig’s blood, s'all the same. Can’t tolerate it. For awhile I could tell myself I could make do like that, Angel does, an’ Angel ain’t got the option of a taste of you, every now and again. S'not enough. Got to hunt and take it live. That’s one thing that…whatever it was, with Rayne, taught me, made me know. It’s the life I’ve got to have. Starved, without. What I am. 'M not Angel, can’t do like he does. ‘F it ain’t live, has no meaning, and I need that. The meaning, as much as the blood. What I live on. Anything else, it’s just death in tiny sips. For me. Sorry. Can’t.”  
  
“You now owe Dawn fifty cents,” said Buffy, and slid closer to gather him in against no resistance. He felt as though her scent and her warmth were soaking into him. She went on, “I know you’re not Angel. I’ve never wanted you to be. It’s not Angel I love--not anymore. Maybe Angel could have planned this all through, carried it out step by deliberate step, and made something like the Thousand Year Reich. But what would it be, what would I be, at the end of it? You’re not a cold-blooded planner. You’re a fighter. Like me. And you made the best start of it any fighter ever could. And brought it to the place we can take it on from here. It’s a good thing you were trying to do, and it will be a good thing when we’re done. Not 100%, but we live in Sunnydale, not heaven. And in Sunnydale, vamps are what they are. And I can’t wish them all gone. I just can’t. So I accept the forest, even though I’ll keep whacking at the individual trees whenever they deserve it. Or get in my way. Or have a real unlucky day. And we’ll do it together. If live blood is what you must have, then that’s what you get, however you have to. First you were forced, and afterward you tried, fair and square. For years. If you say it’s not enough, I’ll take your word for it. It’s not all one thing or all the other. You find out where the balance is. I told you, I love you all the way back and all the way forward, as far as we can go. I know I can’t have you feed on just me, can't be enough all by myself, though it feels great when we do it. If you don’t kill, and I know you don’t, anymore, I’m OK with it. Now the soul’s back, I have no problem letting you, and it, make that call. No explanation or apology needed, ever. You do what you do. I’m not your jailer or your judge. And not your executioner, ever. I only love you and think you’re the finest vamp that ever was or will be. And I don’t want you any different than you are. Scars and all.  
  
Her finger stroked the criss-cross scar on his brow, that was from a Slayer’s magicked blade, and she kissed his eyes, and maybe it wasn’t so hopeless as he’d believed, after all. So long as she still loved him.  
  
**********  
  
Spike was slouched in front next to Buffy, who was driving with her usual grim determination, as though the SUV had to be wrestled into submission at every turn and stop sign, most of the traffic signals having turned to blinking yellow or blinking red so late on a Saturday night. Buffy (Dawn thought) equated a blink with a flinch and gave such indecisive lights no quarter, barging through without touching the brakes at all.  
  
Willow had the front passenger side, reviewing spells with a penlight, muttering under her breath. Glowering and cranky, Mike was with Dawn in the middle seat. They had to drop him up at the factory to choose the crew for the sweep, and he tried out a tentative roster on Spike, who only said, “Anybody you please.”  
  
Mike leaned forward, objecting, “That’s no answer.”  
  
“S’your call.”  
  
Mike didn’t like that either, subsiding with a scowl.  
  
“Keeping that Len as your second?” Spike inquired after a minute or so.  
  
“Why shouldn’t I?” Mike shot back.  
  
“No reason. Just wondered.”  
  
“He’ll keep the fledges in line.”  
  
“Oh. You’re gonna take fledges, then.”  
  
“What of it? Gonna need ‘em, and they’re no loss.”  
  
“Guess so.”  
  
Buffy ran the yellow lights faster.  
  
It was a relief to reach the factory’s driveway, where Mike got out and vanished into the dark as Buffy backed into the road to head back to the named mark.  
  
Easing off on the gas now that stormcloud Mike had been ejected, Buffy asked Spike tightly, “How are you doing? If you say ‘fine,’ I’m gonna smack you.”  
  
“All right, not fine then. That make you happier, pet?” Spike sounded tired and discouraged.  
  
That was good, Dawn judged: it meant he wouldn’t start in about her anchor again for awhile. As Dawn leaned forward, arms folded along the seat back, Buffy demanded, “What’s got into Mike? What’s he so mad about? We agreed to help with the sweep.”  
  
“Bit, you tell her.”  
  
“Power vacuum noises?” Dawn hazarded.  
  
“Something like.”  
  
Buffy persisted, “What’s that mean when it’s in people-speak?” Although Buffy’s voice was sharp, Dawn saw that Buffy had her arm tucked through Spike’s, both her hands dutifully on the wheel. Spike was the only one-handed driver in the family. “Is he on board with this agreement or not?”  
  
“His word’s good,” Spike replied. “He’ll do what he says, though maybe not the way anybody else would want him to. Dunno how he’ll jump. S’hard for him right now.”  
  
“Does that mean you trust him?”  
  
Sighing audibly, Spike slid lower, his knees against the dashboard.  
  
He was unfocused, vague, drifty, uncertain--the most “off” Dawn had ever seen him, sober. Vulnerable. And Mike was affected by it: demanding orders Spike didn’t want to give and Mike resented taking.  
  
“It’s like when Mom was sick,” Dawn formulated suddenly, “and you had to make my lunches. You had to do it because Mom couldn’t, but you hated doing it because that meant things weren’t right and you wanted Mom to get better so you could go back to being a kid again, and Slayer, of course, but she didn’t, and I was miserable because, well, Mom, and complaining about PB&J every day and being a brat because you weren’t Mom and you wouldn’t give me lunch money. And like that,” Dawn finished breathlessly. “Patterns all mixed up and conflicted. And in case I forgot to say, I’m sorry about being such a brat. And Mike absolutely hates not knowing where he stands. A fight would clear the air but, well, fight. Big mess.”  
  
“Huh,” Buffy responded thoughtfully.  
  
The mark was the theater again because it was a high traffic area every night and well lit by streetlights for several blocks in all directions. Buffy parked in front of Evans’ Florist, and Dawn knew what that meant: Buffy wanted to keep the SUV close as retreat or escape, and to protect it. Their Armored Personnel Carrier, fortress, and tank. As everybody got out, Dawn saw a couple figures on the opposite side of the street turn just a little too fast and vanish. Vamps. In a few minutes, the word would be out that no matter what anybody had expected, the sweep was on with the theater as the mark…and Spike was present and apparently presiding.  
  
Giles had emphasized how crucial that was, and neither Spike nor Mike had argued although neither had seemed to like it. Spike had to be seen, and seem in control of things, as if nothing had changed. Otherwise, things would start coming apart real fast. Even though about the last thing Spike wanted tonight was to get into a fight, as off as he was. Dawn heard him mutter, accepting a hand axe from the stock in the back of the SUV, “Forgot to pay my dues in the scarecrow union.”  
  
According to Giles, Rayne would want Spike left alone, hoping to reassert control and use him to manipulate the Chaos Stone. So it was reasonable that Digger would hold off on presenting a major challenge.  
  
Spike had repeated, “Reasonable,” in a certain tone of voice, and Giles had admitted, “Yes, quite. Better double it, then.”  
  
Because if anything was certain, it was that vamps didn’t go by what was reasonable--they saw weakness, vulnerability, and went after it in proper predator fashion.  
  
Even his own. Even Mike, who showed up on his motorcycle a few minutes later, with the chosen crew piling out of three lame-looking vehicles like a bunch of circus clowns, only a lot less funny. Mike couldn’t give an order without half the crew looking to Spike for confirmation and the other half wandering ever-so-subtly into Spike’s personal space, bumping his shoulder or otherwise jostling him. By the time Xander arrived with the SITs, the whole vamp contingent was game-faced and edgy, not just the half-dozen fledges, who’d had to be sent to the back of the alley to keep them from coming at Dawn.  
  
Spike had done that. Predictably and reassuringly. It was why Dawn was there, against Spike’s objections--to need protecting.  
  
Officially, she was present to be a power source Willow could draw on if the mark came under attack. Unofficially, she was there to insure that Spike would actually fight if he had to, not just stand there and get dusted, as both she and Buffy were worried he’d do, left on his own.  
  
After Mike had divided the crew into squads and given them their individual marks, he wandered over, still gloriously game-faced, and murmured, “Dawn Dragonslayer. Got your taser?”  
  
“Right here,” Dawn said, showing him, and shook the bag of stakes slung over her shoulder by way of further demonstration that she was prepared to fight if the opposition didn’t do the sensible thing and came straight for Spike.  
  
“Don’t you do that. If it turns into a scrap back here, you get inside the van, lock everything, and holler. Cell’s your best weapon here. Show me that.”  
  
Dawn pulled the cellphone out of her overalls pocket, but Mike still wasn’t satisfied and made her call him to be sure both cells were charged and working. Then, his face smoothing, he just looked at her: not wanting her there any more than Spike did, but accepting that it wasn’t up to him. Stuck between what he wanted and what he could have, even in this.  
  
It was so plain and so sweet that, having poked her cell away, Dawn caught up one of his hands in both hers, and it just sort of seemed natural that his arm turned her and curled around, enclosing her in a careful steady hug--their backs to Spike, she couldn’t help noticing.  
  
“Don’t like this,” Mike’s voice rumbled in her ear. “Don’t like this at all.”  
  
“I know. It will sort itself out. It’s the between that’s hard.”  
  
A gulped chuckle. “Ain’t gonna say what I’m thinking. ‘Cause I’m a vamp, I expect.”  
  
“Better let go,” Dawn advised, not pulling away, “or Buffy will have a fit.”  
  
He didn’t stir either. “No, that’s fine now. She’s lifted her forbidding. Not up to nobody but you now.”  
  
“What’d you hit her with?”  
  
“Somewhat of a trade. Had something she wanted, so we worked it out.”  
  
“The agreement,” Dawn realized, finally pulling away and turning to look him in the face, not sure if she liked being bartered like that.  
  
Mike let her go, lifting a shoulder slightly. “Might have come into it anyway. But it was a good trade. Good reason.”  
  
Better, he meant, than inadmissible worry about Spike, that would have been awkward for both vamps. Dawn shrugged in turn and scuffed a foot to show she understood the delicate balance of honor, power, and necessity Mike was trying to move through in a way that wouldn’t require settling dominance quite yet.  
  
She told him, “We’re good,” and gave him a smile.  
  
“That so,” he responded, smiling back--his eyes, mostly. “Have to explain to me what that means, sometime.”  
  
“I haven’t figured that out yet myself. There are layers. And complications.”  
  
Mike’s phone squawked, and he immediately put it to his ear, listened a moment, then said, “Yeah,” before stowing it in a front jeans pocket. “Got to go. Len’s got himself and the fledges into something.”  
  
He waited for her nod, and looked for Spike’s acknowledgement, before swinging onto his bike and roaring off.  
  
Dawn found Spike looking at her with no particular expression, but his only comment was, “Like he said--‘f this goes pear-shaped, you get in the van.”  
  
There were just the three of them left. Buffy, the SITs, and Xander were one squad, sweeping an area four blocks on a side, centered on the mark, in constant touch with Willow, who’d set her spell book on a pile of empty cardboard boxes just inside the alley and was bent over, still studying it, the penlight poised in one hand and her cell held to her ear with the other.  
  
Spike had picked a wall to lean against and smoke, looking bored and half asleep. Dawn didn’t see the axe and didn’t know what he’d done with it.  
  
Wandering over, Dawn said, “I should have brought the headphones. Sorry--I didn’t think of it,” just to be saying something.  
  
“Fine: only owe you twelve dollars and fifty cents,” Spike responded, naming the accrued total of the “sorry” penalties. “You hear anything lately from the Lady?”  
  
“Nope. You?”  
  
Spike shook his head, a frown between his half-shut eyes. “Wish I knew what the hell she wants to come out of this. ‘F I’m even s’posed to still be here.”  
  
“She put back your soul,” Dawn offered. “Kind of a waste, if you dusted right away.”  
  
“Yeah. I guess.” Spike studied the coal of his cigarette. “I expect she just don’t want Rayne to have me. Past that, it’s all good.”  
  
“Drama queen,” Dawn accused.  
  
“That too. Got the kit for it….” Dawn thought he added, “And a lot of fucking bloody use….” Pitching the cigarette, he headed slope-shouldered down the alley to check something or maybe to avoid increasing his “sorry” debt.  
  
The front of the theater had become busier, the last few minutes--one show was letting out, and people were lining up to buy tickets for the final show: on a Saturday, nearly always a creepfest of some sort. Big market for that in Sunnydale, Dawn had thought sourly more than once. Watch on the screen what they wouldn’t admit seeing on the street.  
  
Naturally, that was ringing the dinner bell for vamps. All that inattentive food wandering out into the dark, trying to recall where they’d parked, scattering into small groups, pairs, and singletons. That was the main reason the theater was a regular gathering-mark--to keep unauthorized vamps off the people leaving, especially those wearing the smell. And sure enough, Dawn spotted some vamps drifting in, casual and inconspicuous except for the glide of their walk and the calculating way they eyed the flow of the people around and past them.  
  
Because they were coming through, straight for the alley. At least half a dozen: none game-faced, none in the colors. Using the crowd as cover to get close.  
  
Backing deeper into the alley, taser out and extended, Dawn sang out, “Spike!”  
  
***********  
  
Spike was thinking about architecture. Towers, in particular. With gothic angles and swoops. Flying buttresses and the like. The sort rarely seen in California, where flat was much admired, or cheaper, or something or other. Tapered towers in Slovenia or whatever the hell it was now, with roofs like fish scales, nasty to climb but neat to look at, like the tower was a living thing. And then you had your medieval Norman towers with arrow-slit windows you could skinny through although it made the place fucking cold in the wintertime, never get warm no matter how you built the fires up after you’d eaten all the inhabitants and there was no other source of warmth handy though enough brandy helped some with that. Lacework Spanish towers, all symmetrical, builders expecting to get struck by lightning or something if one of the patterns actually made a picture though you couldn’t help looking for them (habit probably, or not being in the right mind-set for the Moorish influence), beautiful by moonlight.  
  
He’d got into the habit of tower climbing whenever he was ejected from the current residence for Angelus to have both the women for himself, the bastard, and Spike left to cool his heels, useless, frustrated, and furious. So he had quite a collection of towers in his mind to review, since the mood was on him again, though he didn’t have Angelus to blame for it, not even for the fact of being a fucking vampire, since that was Dru’s whim and none of Angelus’ doing.  
  
Nothing worth the name in Sunnydale, not even a church steeple (lots of Mission-style flat) except for Glory’s rickety, jerry-built model that he didn’t like to think about even yet.  
  
Probably for the best, since if he’d had one and tried to climb it, he probably would have fucked that up too. Useless git.  
  
Pacing the alley, he felt Rayne at the edges of his mind but that didn’t signify, he wasn’t interested in that at all now, not even his demon, that was embarrassed to have been so easily sucked in for something that was only in the head, fake, nothing real. Sullen and silent within him, temporarily tamed by the lash of his contempt. Fucking bitch, roll over and beg for more, give it up to the first smooth-talker that asked, bloody stupid ugly worthless cunt of a demon.  
  
When Dawn yelled, Spike barely took any notice. Witch would take care of that though vamps were coming from the back of the alley too, both directions. He felt it pass through him like the shock of hitting a disinvite--a bubble of force that closed off the alley and the three of them inside it. Opposition couldn’t get through. Nothing he needed to do about it, just as he’d expected. He pitched one cigarette and lit another, recollecting a tower in Prague.  
  
A lance of force pierced the bubble and it collapsed. Grabbing Dawn’s hand and the both of them retreating toward him, the witch remade the invisible wall but it felt shaky now, flowing and changing like a soap bubble. Spike began to be concerned. Then Dawn went down all in a heap and the witch swung around, pale and wide-eyed, and it was a fight after all.  
  
It’d been stupid to toss the axe onto the boxes, being so certain he’d have nothing to do. Should have expected that would be wrong. He went past the Witch and over Dawn in a rolling forward dive, catching up the long band of the bag of stakes, and plowed into the front wave of vamps swinging the bag to back them off: wood hurt, no matter what part of a vamp’s anatomy it hit. Less effective in the sack, though. As quick as he could, he grabbed a pair out and was in business, Willow meanwhile dragging against the nearer wall to put it at her back and casting baseball-sized clumps of glowy stuff at the vamps coming in from behind. Not much power in those, though: the vamps startled and held for a second when they were hit, then came on, not hurt at all that Spike could tell.  
  
He’d taken out three vamps, and that left about ten remaining, and he was only engaged with four of them. The fight wasn’t balancing and he couldn’t cast the choreography, the flow of it, out in his mind. Didn’t matter, he supposed: Buffy and the SITs would be along soon to sort it. Only have to hold awhile, long enough for them to arrive, and afterward didn’t matter.  
  
But the vamps he was engaged with should have swarmed him by now, two were big sods he recalled seeing sometime at Willy’s, but they were treating him like an incidental nuisance, belting him into walls and such but not locking him down for the kill. More intent on getting past him, he thought while hooking a leg out from under one of the smaller pair and stomping the knee before spinning out of what’d been meant as a headlock, with no time to place the stake. When the witch yelled in fury, behind him, he understood: they weren’t after him. They were after Dawn.  
  
It felt like waking up, all over. His demon roused at the insult and even the soul was incensed, aflame with the need to defend, protect. Everything slowed down slightly because he was seeing it all, the true target at the center and therefore all the other motions comprehensible, even predictable.  
  
Being flung into the wall for maybe the fifth time slowed him down a little but he had it mapped now, how to weave the blows, one, two, three, and duck and ease back, spin, take out the last one and be clear to confront the bunch behind.  
  
It wasn’t gonna wait for Buffy, he already knew that, and if the witch couldn’t keep them off, there were enough to keep him engaged while Bit was hurt or taken or whatever they meant to do to her. Go to the fallback, then.  
  
He’d used the alley of the theater as the mark often enough that he knew every inch and had a whole variety of contingency plans formulated and stored. Most didn’t cover this situation, with Bit down and the witch not able to jump the twenty feet to the bottom of the fire escape. So he went with another option, using the relative freedom of not being specifically targeted to get past and haul open the metal fire door, illegally locked to prevent anybody from sneaking in and seeing their crappy movies for free, setting off alarms inside, and that was fine with Spike: the more noise and confusion, the better. He yanked harder and took the whole door off its hinges and slammed it edgewise into as many vamps as he could reach, then flung it flat into the rest. That bought enough time for the witch to drag Dawn inside as the first panicked patrons came the other way, tangling with the vamps just getting themselves sorted again.  
  
Spike shoved and elbowed himself inside with the half-formed intention of yelling “Fire!” to stir things up even more. Instead, some weird freak of habit made him lift an arm and yell, “Here!” as he backed Willow into the angle between the side of the stage and the rear wall and took a stance to guard the corner.  
  
One, and then two, and then another pair, and then five, weren’t running. Hearing, they came to him, the untried ignorant children, veterans of the class, helping keep that corner protected from the storm surge of bodies trying to get out the door all at once. He saw Candy’s erect topknot and the two improving trippers and a couple of other known faces, and when he directed, “Lock arms. Stand,” they did that, swaying as they needed to, to make and hold contact with one another until the crowd thinned, most having headed for the front when the alarms started going off.  
  
With the counter-flow easing, the vamps came in. So did Buffy and the SITs. The children had no business mixing into that, so Spike told the nearest one, “Stand. Stay put,” and dove into the melee.  
  
The SITs had their tasers and it seemed to be settling nicely, with all but two down and then dusted, the SITs fighting efficiently by threes, two engaging and the lead going for the kill, when a new bunch barged in and they were fighting all over the clear area between the first seats and the stage, and some of the children were getting hurt and tossed around, unable to hold. But the tasers were still the margin: get in a charge clean, and the vamp was down, could be tended to later. SITs, they could mind themselves: Spike turned to get the children out of it. Some injuries as he pried them away from attacking vamps and shoved them clear, but that was better than getting their throats torn out. Stupid fucking movie still playing, everything flickering from the change of scenes and angles, screaming on the speakers as some idiot teens or other ran from some lame monster doing about an inch a year and still being overtaken, watch out for the root, oops, same every time, and until he caught the terror in the children’s faces, he hadn’t bothered to think he’d gone game-faced, of course he had, needed the velocity and the sight and the ferocious single-mindedness of his demon, didn’t he, and not about to shed it to avoid frightening teenagers who’d otherwise be so much dead meat.  
  
It was Mike who had the good manners and consideration. Spike stuck to what he knew: direct, bloody mayhem.  
  
And when they had that nearly all sorted, and Buffy coming toward him in the headache-inducing flicker, with the worst possible timing in the world, more reinforcements arrived: that Len and the fledges, who knew enough to veer around Buffy and the SITs but came straight at the children, many of which were deliciously bleeding.  
  
Spike foresaw the awfulness, shaped in his mind as clear as if it’d already happened, and put himself inevitably between, calling, “Stand. Whoever budges is gone.”  
  
But they were only fledges, and their demons hadn’t yet learned to mind them, let alone anybody else. They came on--swift, unheeding, and ravenous. He took the first two and pitched them into the rest, they were dust already by his word except for Mike’s thrift, and he’d carry out the execution himself if he had to. They checked and looked at him, assessing and smelling, and he knew they were thinking of taking him down. He’d taken damage, no hiding it; and the urge to challenge and pull down a wounded leader was instinctual. He’d watched Mike fighting it for hours. He’d done it himself a few times.  
  
Likely he could take them all. That was one way things could go. If Buffy and the SITs couldn’t keep out of it, any tentative alliance she’d made with Mike was done, right there. That was another way things could go.  
  
Spike twisted and broke the bangle. Using the jagged edge, he opened his right arm from elbow to thumb--offering the fledges a third alternative.  
  
They weren’t of his bloodline. But blood as old as his had its own draw for any fledge--for its rarity, if nothing else. And they were his. He’d said so. They had more claim on his protection than the children.  
  
He opened the other arm and stood waiting.  
  
The first one to come was Sue--latching on high, above the cut, and biting deep. Leaving room for two others, farther down. The next was a stupid little fledge, called himself Teddy, really dumb name for a vamp, have to think of something better sometime. After Teddy, a vamp turned later than most, all starved bone and stretched flesh, smell of dirt, smell of paper, books, dirty clothes, floppy ill-trimmed grey hair, and this must be the new Dalton, the former Cyrus Smith, and Mike had no business letting him out so soon where he might get hurt, Spike would have to have words with Mike about that. Vamp Cyrus made wet, humming noises as he fed.  
  
Couldn’t kill a vamp by draining. Might be awhile feeding up again and might well get dusted while he was weak and unable to defend himself properly, but draining alone wouldn’t do it. So once the fledges were all latched on and occupied, Spike didn’t worry about the situation anymore, let the fog roll in however it pleased because what he was doing goddam _meant_ something, it was a goddam _transaction_ , and nobody would get dead from it, so that was all right and enough. Didn’t hurt a bit.  
  
And Buffy, bless her, knew enough not to interrupt.  
  
When the dizziness got strong enough that he couldn’t hold stance and went down, he figured somebody would come at his throat, to do the thing properly. But nobody did, which was odd. Muzzy headed, he found the fledges all backed off and being chewed out by Len and Mike, except for Sue, kneeling maybe a foot away. When their eyes met, Sue said, “I’m yours. To come and go from your hand and by your word. I remember how that was now.”  
  
After awhile he thought of what to say in reply: “You’re mine, Suzanne. You come and go from my hand. I’ll keep you from true death, the best I can.”  
  
Then Cyrus, all bloody-faced and goggling, apparently with a thing for ceremony, came and said the same thing as Sue had, more or less, since he said it in Bensht, a defunct demon tongue, and Spike had to think how to answer him the same, since Bensht was full of glottal stops and awkward to pronounce.  
  
When Spike had made the reply, Cyrus added, “Eternities of language. Thank you for choosing me.” His face practically glowed. Or maybe it was the yellow eyes.  
  
“Yeah, we’ll talk about how great it was you were turned some other time. Now fuck off.”  
  
“Of course, Master Spike.” Cyrus backed off, still on his knees, making way for the next one. Two was precedent: now they all wanted to do it. Fucking fledges, bending to any wind that blew. Now Mike was going at it with Len, who probably wouldn’t be second anymore, assuming Mike didn’t just wring his head off. Mike seemed really pissed off.  
  
Nothing to do with Spike. He didn’t have to worry about that anymore.  
  
Spike didn’t pay much attention, mechanically acknowledging the declarations, until he realized the person in front of him was Amanda. As usual on sweep or patrol, she was in the colors. But it wasn’t usual that the neckband of the tee had been raggedly cut and pulled apart, hanging in a flap in front, baring her neck and part of her shoulder.  
  
Spike said, “You don’t have to do this.”  
  
Amanda glanced favorlessly at the fledges, now all backed off and meek as milk. “They’re outgo. We’re income. We have a bargain, Spike.”  
  
He couldn’t recall if he’d promised or not, so he said, “Hell with the bargain.”  
  
“Doesn’t work like that,” said Rona, coming and hunkering down. Kennedy stood behind her, looking peeved, which didn’t mean much because she mostly looked that way. Both SITs had torn, dangling neckbands too. Spike shut his eyes and tried not to hear their heartbeats. Rona went on, “We’ve been through this all the ways from Sunday, Spike. You said we were in, and this is part of being in. Don’t be an asshole about it, OK?”  
  
“It would mark you,” Spike objected.  
  
“Funny thing,” said Rona, “we all forgot to bring our little tin cups. Have to do it the old-fashioned way.”  
  
And Kennedy said, “Spike, don’t you think we’re marked already?”  
  
Spike couldn’t think of any good answer to that, so he said, “Ain’t given you the weapons practice you wanted.”  
  
“That’s lame,” Amanda commented to Kennedy. “That’s the lamest thing yet. Will you quit trying to find excuses and get on with it? I have a chemistry test on Monday that I haven’t studied for.”  
  
“Buffy?” Spike looked around for her, found her watching with her arms folded.  
  
“We’ve had this discussion,” she commented flatly. “It’s live, it’s willing, and I’m not getting you off the hook here. Do, or do not: your call, Master Yoda. Besides, I’m dessert.” She grinned at him smugly.  
  
Spike leaned in fast, figuring Amanda would flinch and that would be the end of it. But she didn’t. Then he waited for the soul to kick in, give him hell about it. He was vaguely surprised when that didn’t happen either. Apparently donation wasn’t quite as disgusting as feeding that was forced, involuntary, coerced. Done the soul good, maybe, sticking it out in the noplace for awhile: made it a fraction less absolute and unreasonable.  
  
Very slowly Spike let himself lean the final inch, tasting the place a moment, breathing in the sweet skinscent of healthy young girl. This girl: Amanda. Herself and no other. No more than the barest touch needed to break the skin. Then the fast, hot, blood leaping to him, in him completely like an electrical charge or getting drenched in a storm, no part more than another. He was, literally, alive with it. But even more, with the meaning of it. He’d likely said it wrong or maybe hadn’t understood it well himself. But it was the meaning--the care, the gift--that came into him, that sufficed.  
  
When he gently pressed and licked the bite shut, Amanda protested anxiously, “You barely took any. There’s more!”  
  
“You’re now officially a cow, Amanda,” said Rona, shuffling closer on her knees. “Kindly shut up and move away from the loading area. Next tanker’s here.”  
  
“Wasn’t I good? Did I do something wrong?” Amanda bleated.  
  
Out of the center of a great peace and exasperated affection, Spike told her, “You’re perfect, love. Any more perfect, you’d be in heaven for a saint and Buffy’d have her nose out of joint for…well, forever. ‘Tisn’t like bangers and mash here, by the pound, so much to the quid. S’magic, pet.” He wondered if he’d ever truly realized that himself, or if he’d once known and somehow forgotten. Didn’t stink like magic, maybe because nobody had made it. It just was.  
  
Eyes falling shut, he leaned to Rona and tasted the contour of her neck with the bloodbeat underneath and her good smell that was hers alone, nothing else ever like her, and then the deeper taste, and the vibration as her voice gasped, “Oh, lordy!” But she wasn’t afraid, he could taste that, taste it all, the whole of her. Demon considered it would have been better if she was terrified and subdued to it, soul considered it quite fine just as it was. Spike let them have it out between them, wholly in the moment and in no hurry whatever to be done.  
  
When he had it all, all the meaning, he nuzzled at her breasts, then pushed lower. Ah. Taint of cancer in the blood, very faint. Not her breasts: down below, in her woman-parts. He’d tell her later. There’d be time. Or maybe not. Couldn’t depend on time.  
  
Straightening, he touched her chin, made her look at him, all game-faced as he was. “Rona, first thing tomorrow, you get up to the clinic. Buffy, she’ll tell you who to ask for. Nothing real wrong yet, and ‘f you see to it now, there won’t be. Will you do that?”  
  
 _Now_ she was scared. Not with a vampire at her throat. Seldom in a fight. Only now. “You’d just nag me to death if I don’t, right?”  
  
“Certain sure. Some things, you just don’t fuck about with, figure if you don’t admit you notice, they’ll bugger off all on their own, like a proposition from an ugly guy. This ugly guy stays till you chuck him out, good and proper.”  
  
“Yeah, Spike. All right. Ken, you’ll come with me, right?”  
  
“I’m the backup, in case the doc gets personal and needs punching out,” Kennedy drawled, theorizing. “I’m always up for a good fight. Have to check my busy social calendar, but I think the morning’s open. Come on, Spike. Things to break, people to do.”  
  
As Rona pushed to her feet, Kennedy knelt down and Spike leaned to her. She was rigid, vibrating, terrified, angry. Anywhere close, he’d have known it. He stopped, sighed.  
  
In a choked, almost soundless whisper, she said, “You are not gonna not do this. Doesn’t matter if you hate it, or I hate it. Not gonna not do it.”  
  
Because the meaning of his excluding her would be wrong. He understood that completely and bit down. Her blood was full of rage and dread. Extremely charged, flavorful. Determination didn’t have a taste, but he knew it was there, past the reach of his senses.  
  
Didn’t take much to have it all. He licked shut the wound he’d made.  
  
Looking him steadfastly in the eyes, Kennedy challenged, “You sending me anyplace? Got a specialist in mind?”  
  
He let game face fade, having no present need of it. “No. S’all right, inside, best I can tell.”  
  
“It is?” She sounded surprised.  
  
“The rest, that’s nobody’s business but yours. An’ knew it anyway, pretty much.”  
  
Easing back from Kennedy, he flipped to his feet and looked around, a little surprised they hadn’t been interrupted, what with the alarms still going on and all. But maybe proprietors in Sunnydale had a sensible reluctance to investigate large fucking melees in the middle of the night. Most likely they’d scarpered, like the rest.  
  
As he’d expected, Buffy was only a few steps off, trying not to glower and looking stiff, sour, and pissed off in consequence. Never would be easy with his feeding off anybody but her, regardless of what anybody paid lip service to. He had the feeling he was gonna hear about this later, from some different direction than where it really was coming from.  
  
“Dessert?” Buffy asked, trying to fake enthusiasm.  
  
“Not just now, love. Bit? You with us?”  
  
“Yeah, Spike. Newest member of ‘I hate it when somebody fucks with my head’ club present and accounted for.” She was leaning on the edge of the stage. Looked a little wobbly and she’d sicked up on the floor, standing on tip-toe well clear of the puddle. Good thing, he decided, to get her away from it.  
  
“Fetch the kit from the van. ‘Manda--”  
  
Still in surly game face, Mike showed Amanda some teeth, warning her off as escort, claiming that position for himself, and the two of them went off.  
  
Spike considered the children. One of the trippers, George, was down and dead, nothing to be done about it. Broken neck, by the look of it. The other one, Andy, was on his feet and had armed himself with a stake from the bag Spike must have dropped sometime in the festivities. The rest were huddled behind, against the front of the stage. Considerable bloodsmell in that quarter, he’d known that before: what had drawn the fledges, that Mike seemed to have sent off, likely to finish their sweep. No present problem from that direction anyway.  
  
Terror sweat coming off them like fog. But they were balanced on a point, waiting. Or maybe just frozen in shock, too many things they really didn’t want to know, all at once and still there, not to be denied or rationalized away.  
  
Spike first thought one way, that it would be best to hang back and let Buffy and the SITs tend to them, judge if any needed to go to hospital, they had a lot of practice with that. Then he thought another way, and strolled toward them, then turned to shove one of the seats open and drop into it, a wide sprawl: not so close they’d take it as threat, not knowing yet how fast he could move when he wanted to. Well within striking distance, every one of them.  
  
“Decent,” he told Andy, “for a first engagement. Wasn’t set up well, though: we took losses. Too many hurt that needn’t have been. But you stood your ground, and--”  
  
“What _are_ you?” Andy demanded, face twisting. “No kind of an angel!”  
  
So Candy, she’d been blabbing. No real surprise there.  
  
“Not hardly. Same as I’ve been all along. The class, and now. Figured to show some of you that side of things…but not yet. And not like this.” As Mike and Dawn came back, Mike toting the big metal first-aid case so that Dawn was absurdly escorting him, Spike went on, “It’s done now, for the moment. Nobody here means you any harm whatever. Get you patched up and sorted, see who needs more tending, who’s mostly all right and fit to go. Then those that want to, we can have that talk.”  
  
Mike opened the case on a nearby seat, and the three SITs gathered in to talk to the children and assay the damage. Dawn plunked down on the seat to Spike’s left to keep him company and try to bruise his fingers with the strength of her grip.  
  
“Not your usual disorganized vamp fight,” she commented, looking straight ahead and talking to the air. “He was ready for us. Each of us and all of us. Didn’t know or forgot about the phones, though. I think. Or we’d have been in deep trouble.”  
  
“Yeah,” Spike agreed absently, pushing out of the chair as Amanda called him to help replace a dislocated shoulder. Buffy could have done it, just as well. But he’d made up his mind: these children were not to be allowed to be afraid of him. So he took care of it himself, afterward moving among them as he was called or needed.  
  
Fed up so fine, he found the blood no distraction, no temptation.


	16. Renewals

Soaping Spike’s shoulders and back, Buffy had a satisfying sense of continuity. Post-patrol shower check was part of the usual drill and one of the pleasanter parts, as well.  
  
The water was cranked up as near scalding as Buffy could tolerate because tired or battered or both, Spike craved heat and craved close, both of which Buffy was totally on board with. Typically he was sleepy and soft and biddable, quietly announcing _ow_ when she touched something sore, identifying the place for monitoring the healing’s progress.  
  
Today his torso was a mass of bruises just coming on, and he had several lumps under his hair that she found by touch and determined had quit bleeding; there were probably broken ribs, and he showed general evidence of having been considerably knocked about. About par for daybreak on a Sunday morning. With good rest and feeding, everything would likely be 90% healed by nightfall. But Buffy still liked checking. All that warm, wet skin and her fingers identifying the muscle knots for later luxurious kneading. All that comfortable and accustomed intimacy.  
  
She had a banged-up shoulder and a sore foot some clown had tramped on. The usual. She always appreciated the warmth and closeness too and had been known to do him either in the shower or on the cold tile floor with its famous small skating rug: shiversome but urgent and satisfying. Slaying generally left her wildly turned on, and Spike would be there and always interested: one of the benefits of having a vampire lover.  
  
Similarly, if Spike hadn’t burned off enough energy, his checking out her injuries would turn rowdy and randy, leading into sessions of hot shower sex done in frantic haste to beat the chill blast that followed emptying the water heater. But this morning he was quiet, accepting whatever it pleased her to do to him, and that was always good too.  
  
It seemed months since they’d performed this customary small ritual. Buffy had missed it, and him, desperately. Since it was plain the opposition could now locate him no matter where he was, the point of staying away was gone. He’d made no objection to coming back. That interval was done, the soul back in place, and Buffy was heartily glad to have it so. Glad he was finally home and wholly hers again.  
  
She bent her forehead against his back while the shampoo washed out. Then she went up onto tiptoe to murmur, “Let’s get dry. Then I want to do some loving on you.”  
  
Spike didn’t respond except to cut off the water and step out of the enclosure, bending to collect the oversize towels. She loved him sleepy-eyed, with his hair in an untended tumble. After minimal drying came robes and a quick scuttle from the bathroom to the bedroom. Buffy had cranked the electric blanket up to the max beforehand, get the bedding all toasty. As soon as he’d shut the door, Spike shed the robe and slid under the covers with a soft hiss of satisfaction. Buffy paused to pull on lace-trimmed babydolls because she never was comfortable naked, and she liked feeling she looked nice though she suspected Spike would like her just as well slathered in mud, peanut butter (though not crunchy-style--that _hurt!_ ), or nothing at all.  
  
When she padded toward the bed, Spike rolled over and opened his arms for her. But his eyes were still tired, not full of glee and mischief, and she shook her head, bending to the bedside cabinet and pulling a zip bag out of the drawer. She’d had Mike bring down the whole pill stash from the factory, and he’d patiently sorted the pills by color and told her what each color meant so she could label the bags. The red-and-white capsules were the pain pills. She picked one out with thumb and forefinger, then sealed the bag again. “Nuh-uh, Crash, the deal is that I love on you, you don’t get to do anything.” She leaned with the pill and a glass of water she had ready on the cabinet, and he took them, eyes uplifted, not bothering to check what kind of pill it was.  
  
He’d mixed them into a complete muddle, she thought. He didn’t like what happened to him being all that predictable. Hurting, he wouldn’t have known what kind to choose. He needed her.  
  
The thought made her smile, setting the glass aside.  
  
She’d already decided that with both his forearms jaggedly sliced from wrists to elbows, play with the silk scarves in the bottom of the cabinet wasn’t on the menu. Some hurt was fun; some wasn’t. And this was for him: her welcome, her praise. So she started with some general cuddling and petting, kissing slow and wet and thorough, until she felt a little of the bracing release and his eyes hazed over, wide and deep. The pill had kicked in.  
  
“Headache?” she asked softly.  
  
“Bit of one, yeah,” he admitted, sagging back even more bonelessly, gazing at the ceiling.  
  
No wonder, with multiple concussions--all those lumps.  
  
So then she admitted to the sore foot and turned around, head to toe, to let him work those muscles with his strong, clever fingers: he liked to do for her, and this was something he could do without exerting himself. “Left shoulder’s bad, too,” he mentioned after awhile. “Come back up here, an’ I’ll see to it.”  
  
She lifted her head to look around. “Nope, I’m just fine and comfy here,” she commented, returning to what she’d been doing--playing with his personal “dangly bits,” as he called them. He was aroused, of course, but not specially interested. She stretched the well massaged foot and rubbed the side of his face with it.  
  
Enough foreplay, she decided. Time to get down to the main event. Nosing into the wiry pubic curls, she began giving his shaft the serious lollipop treatment with mouth and with fingers. Though he’d certainly felt what she was up to, there was a big indrawn breath of startled reaction, held too long.  
  
His abs went rigid. He was not enjoying this. But he hadn’t said anything to stop her, either.  
  
She lifted her head to look again. In the faint light through the new windows, he was braced up on his elbows, head thrown back, eyes shut. His beautiful chest and his face were all piebald with the full bloom of bruises now: purple shadows cast by no light. His hands were fisted tight in the bedclothes. Buffy scuttled quickly around to kiss and cuddle him, asking, “What?”  
  
He shook his head.  
  
Buffy tried to ignore the idiot keen of _He doesn’t want me! Doesn’t want me!_ that her insecurity instantly started whining. Babble, though, was harder to stop. “It’s OK, we don’t have to, if you just want to sleep or something, it’s OK, I just wanted it to be good for you, easy, I could--”  
  
He pounced her. All of a sudden she was flat on her back and being unceremoniously entered, hard and fast, and the sudden gulp of surprised breath was hers. His face, over her, was intent and almost angry, inward-focused the way it sometimes was when the play had been rough and he was all wound up with it and turning loose. Good times too, though. The babble became the noises he wanted and the incoherent encouragements, she’d been aching for him nearly forever, and she could do sudden role changes, dancing the new dance with him because finally it was all the same dance, the shock and turn and pressure of them-coming-together in all the weathers they could be, serene or stormy.  
  
He was done before she was, and she wasn’t surprised. It’d felt like it would be like that. After a minute or two of collapse, he had his face bent into her neck, shuddering and sobbing and saying hoarsely, “Sorry, sorry,” arms everywhere as though he wanted to hold her but had forgotten how or didn’t dare, and the next minute he’d be flying--down to the basement or even out the door, just had to move when he was this wound up. She grabbed his face, held him still a second, wrapped both legs around his thighs and locked at the ankles. “Wrong side,” she told him, and he just blinked at her, not taking it in. She turned her head, offering the right side of her neck. “Go for the mark. Remember: dessert?”  
  
There was the familiar slight grating of the bones adjusting, fangs elongating. Then his weight shifted, heavy upon her, and the good pain of his biting into the scarred flesh of the claim mark. Instantaneous rapture. All sensation magnified manyfold. The ecstasy of deep communion obliterating awareness of anything else. The joy of being wanted, needed, and sufficient to so great a need and hunger and knowing it was joy to him, too. The perfection of Slayer and vampire, sufficient to one another and at last satisfied and still.  
  
Dozily content, Buffy pushed fingers through his hair and then stroked his shoulders. She couldn’t have said how much he’d taken. Not a lot, though. Enough. When he’d had what he needed, he stopped. The mark itched and tingled with its renewal.  
  
Kissing his again fangless mouth, she whispered, “You home yet?”  
  
“Nearly. Working on it. You…all right, love?”  
  
“Fine. Very fine. Rest now: we have all day.”  
  
She held him until he slept, until they both did.  
  
********  
  
They’d all slept late. Stumbling downstairs about noon, Dawn found Spike in the front room, sitting on the floor in front of the couch and staring in the direction of the TV, currently showing an infomercial about some device to remove disgusting stuff from carpets. The gadget had a piston action, and she hung around a minute to see if there’d be a slogan _Bounces as it sucks._ But there was no such memorable bizarreity. Wandering on to the kitchen, she drank a glass of extremely cold orange juice that sort of woke her up, then took the paper plate of hot toaster pastries back to the front room and settled down next to Spike.  
  
It was very nice to find him there and she’d missed him, what with him being away and her being away, but he’d know that so nothing had to be said about it. Cracking off an oozy corner of pastry and touching her tongue to the filling to see if it was edible yet, she asked, “What’cha not watching?”  
  
He looked around lazily. “Dunno. Some crap or other.”  
  
“Are we bored yet?” Deciding the corner was sufficiently cool, Dawn dropped it into her mouth and chewed.  
  
“Dunno. Too shagged-out to tell.”  
  
By mutual agreement, Dawn didn’t ask how literally he meant that and Spike didn’t offer details.  
  
The carpet tool was now making farting noises: the infomercial people were looking at it admiringly. Dawn and Spike reacted with similar expressions of incredulous repulsion, traded a glance, and by mutual agreement pretended they hadn’t been watching the hopping obscenity at all. Only the truly bored and insane would watch such a thing; only the immature and moronic would find it funny.  
  
Spike mentioned, as a lame excuse, “Thought there’d be cartoons.”  
  
Dawn commented, “Computer graphics have ruined everything. Too lifelike. No fun.”  
  
“Right about that. No bloody imagination.”  
  
The companionable silence returned.  
  
It was as though they were underwater, she thought, and floating among tall, stirring weeds. Everything slow and languid, coordinated to the flow that carried them both. But not easy with each other, the way floating things should be: Spike was holding himself carefully separate and moved away when she started to lean on him.  
  
She knew what would be great for that and raced up to her room. Returning, she dumped the bottles and tissues and the separators that were like pink foam brass-knuckles, on the rug. “I have indigo,” she announced, setting the bottle upright. “Also black, if you want to be a pig about it, as per usual.”  
  
“Yeah, all right,” he decided eventually, muting the TV sound, then laying the controller aside.  
  
She worked the separator between the toes of his right foot and set seriously to work. Since he hadn’t specified, she chose the indigo: almost charcoal-dark, but with a slate tone that also came through. While his toes were drying for the second coat, she straddled his knees and offered her fingers for being done in violent chartreuse. He did the first nail meticulously, then set it aside on the shelf of his forearm to do the next one.  
  
The undersides of his arms were healed smooth again, she’d noticed. And the other bruises were on the yellow-brown side of green and fading. As he finished a second finger, she lifted her hand to brush pensive fingertips along the freshly unmarked back of his left arm, hand to elbow: where the tattoo that meant _Dawn_ had been. Then she obediently set the fingers back on the right-arm shelf without needing to be told.  
  
“Do tattoos hurt?” she asked.  
  
He hitched a shoulder without changing the precision of the brush strokes. “Some. I expect. Was asleep pretty much the whole time, if you must know. Stings awhile, after. Though you wouldn’t have to soak it in vinegar to have it set, like a vamp would. Thinking of having yourself done?”  
  
“Might. Sometime. How’d Rayne get it off?”  
  
“Dunno. Don’t recall.”  
  
Noticing how his face tightened, she dropped the topic and went on about where tattoo designs came from, if you could search them on the Web, what custom designs cost--was it by the inch or by the color, and were all colors available, and did some cost more than others?--steadily getting more and more comfy in each other’s space. When she leaned forward to inspect the job so far, and her hair was in danger of sliding onto her hand, Spike casually smoothed and held it clear until she straightened, and that was good.  
  
She was perched on the couch and Spike was stretched out on the floor, doing the toes of her first foot propped in the separator, the two of them in a fanciful argument about which new musical instrument needed inventing and what it should sound like, when Xander came in, sliding a high but narrow rectangular box over the sill--another new window, no doubt. He’d been doing two or three a weekend, as they arrived from the manufacturer, fitted with the special glass.  
  
Catching sight of them, Xander stopped, doing a take.  
  
“We’re toe bonding,” Dawn announced regally.  
  
“Don’t wanna know about it,” Xander responded, letting the box rest and setting hands on hips, above his tool belt. “Just clear out, OK? Because this is the big baby, the front window, and the sun’s coming in here for awhile, and that could be poof time. Unless of course you want to practice your new trick, fangless, in which case, you can help get the plywood off.”  
  
“Ruin m’nails,” Spike declined, displaying the back of his one completed hand with its indigo nails and flipping Xander the two-fingered British “bird” in the process. Dawn giggled, and Xander only pretended to look insulted. Spike and Xander were working on finding their comfortable distance again, too, Dawn thought, carefully collecting what Spike would call “the doings” into overall pockets and the fold of a bent arm held tight against her ribs.  
  
After a consultation of glances, they reconvened the toe bonding outside, in lawn chairs dragged into the patchy shade of the big maple. While her second foot was finished, Dawn looked wistfully past the hedge: where Casa Spike had been. She missed the shaded porch and the lazy summer mornings there, with all two-dozen plus SITs doing exercises and drills in the sunlight and she and Spike steadily carving stakes and chatting about nothing much, just being happily in each other’s presence in the part of their day that overlapped, she just awakened and he slowing toward sleep after the night’s patrol or fighting or whatever, casting a critical eye at the SITs and calling a comment or correction from time to time.  
  
“It’s too chilly out here,” Dawn announced suddenly, wrapping arms around her. “No, stay--I’m only gonna get a sweater or something, I’ll be right back.”  
  
But she brought more than a sweater, carefully assumed to avoid smearing the polish: she brought an armload of the drooping lengths of rough pine 1x1 stock Xander supplied, nobody asked from where, and her own sharp knife and a paring knife from the kitchen for Spike, whose genuine Sheffield folding knife had gone somewhere in the events of the summer. Dawn knew fine blades were made in Sheffield because Spike said so.  
  
Dumping the wood, Dawn explained, “That sack last night was about the last. We’ve been…otherwise occupied, and there was nobody to fill in. Do your other hand, though, first.” Settling on the empty facing chair and pointing to her knee, she uncapped the indigo polish and began work when Spike obediently set his spread fingers where she’d pointed. After a few fingers, she asked offhandedly, “You haven’t nagged once about my anchor. Why is that? Or shouldn’t I ask?”  
  
“Been thinkin’ about that.”  
  
“And?” Dawn prompted.  
  
“Still thinkin’ about it.” Spike had his head bent, so she couldn’t read his expression. “Need me a new knife, I guess. Get one up to the mall, there’s a store there. Buy it, even. You could come with. If you want.”  
  
“Well, be a little offhand, why don’t you?” Dawn responded, brandishing the brush in a threatening manner. “Supper?”  
  
“Sure, why not.” After a moment’s thought, he added, “Have to ask Buffy for her card, though. Mine’s gone west.”  
  
“A lot’s gone west. Now that the soul’s back, and you’re back, and I’m back, it should feel the same. It doesn’t, though.”  
  
“Need a new cell phone of my own, too, now I think of it. Way it is, I’m clear out of the loop: out of touch with everybody, everything that’s going on.” It was clear he knew, as she did, that they’d begun cautiously treading the edges of the dangerous ground, because after the seeming digression, he swung right back like a shark: “What’s doing now, between you and Michael?”  
  
“None of your business. I’m seventeen now.”  
  
“Michael is mine, and that makes it my business. And last I knew, you were mine. ‘Less that’s changed, that makes it my business from the other end, too. An’ I expect you know why Rayne wants you. What qualifies you.”  
  
Dawn’s head made a quick, embarrassed bob. “I know: because I’m a freakin’ virgin. Magically pure and potent, and channel besides for quite a lot of energy for anybody who can take it, or that I’d give it to. Glory’s gone but I still have my Keyness.”  
  
“Yeah,” said Spike quietly. “And I’m kind of wondering what you mean to do about that--the part you can change.”  
  
“I’m thinking about it,” snapped Dawn tartly, giving him some of his own back. “And when I make up my mind, it won’t be you I tell.”  
  
“Never expected it would be. That’s for you to choose and say. Never wanted that from you. Except that while, when I’d marked you….” Spike looked up at her then, the blue eyes piercing and steady, making her hold completely still. “Don’t. Not till this is all over and settled, anyways.”  
  
“Why?” Dawn challenged.  
  
“Because all the players are in place now. Where and as they need to be. I can feel it. Makes the right shape in my mind, like lining up a pool shot. Can’t explain it any better than that. You consult with the Lady, if you want, if you can. She’ll say the same as me.”  
  
“But…he was in my _mind_ , Spike! And I couldn’t do anything! When I tried to throw him out, I just fell down, I couldn’t do _anything!_ And I don’t _like_ him, he _giggles_ \--”  
  
“Don’t like him neither,” Spike cut in, making the habitual cigarette-getting gesture for about the fifth time since they’d come outside, each time aborted or changed into something else. This time, he reached out and smoothed her hair, then cupped her cheek. “Can’t promise you won’t get hurt, Bit, but that’s what you signed on for when you latched onto me, the way you did. An’ you know that. May need to risk you like I’d risk myself. Figured you’d be up for that, ‘f we talked it through first, maybe.”  
  
 _And never_ , she thought, but didn’t finish the thought. _And never…._ Wringing her neatly en-greened fingers in an agony of uncertainty, perfectly aware she was being addressed as an adult and not wanting to fall short of that, she blurted, “Will it _hurt_ him? Hurt him really _bad?”_  
  
“Bad as I can contrive. Figures, Rayne does, I’m just a mutt moron. Pretty, maybe, and nice for a toy for a day or a few but not much of a tool except I can work the Stone. And he’s got other ways for that ‘f he needs to. But I’ve been thinking.” Spike sat forward in his chair, frowning thoughtfully, hands folded on his knees. “Lady, she pushed and she nagged, but she’s never forced me to nothing, never. And whenever I put out my hand, she set power in it, as much as I could handle or understand. She sent the amulet, guided Red an’ Demon Girl to it, same as. Sometimes she can’t stand me…but she’s always respected me. Always left me my choice. If she’s pulled out now, it’s because she figures everything’s in place that needs to be, to end this. And she don’t care to do things direct, barge in and force events. Ain’t got the fine touch for that, I expect. Scale is too small for the kind of thing she could do. Like trying to hit a fly with a mallet, knock down the wall. Seems that’s how Powers are, or we’d all be flat, long since…. _Instrument._ That’s what she’s called me. And so long as we see the same and want the same, I got no objection to that. Won’t be her dog, run to her heel, bay at her moon like some…. But seems as though she’s prepared to put up with that. Settle for what I’m willing…what I _can_ give. Not so much, maybe, as I thought. But I see this lining up, like I said….”  
  
“Spike, nine tenths of that was utter nonsense,” Dawn mentioned, perfectly fairly, “and the rest was vague to the point of uselessness. You know that, right?”  
  
Spike tilted his head and gave her a slow smile. “Let me tell you about this tower there was, one time, in Northumbria. Had ivy on it so thick, there were whole stretches you couldn’t see an inch of stone. A bit nasty in the wintertime but this was October, still warm days and the trees roundabout a riot, lots more trees then than nowadays, go for miles and miles and never see anything else. Anyway, we were up there because Herself had taken some notion or the stars had told Dru staying where we were was bad luck, or some such nonsense, nobody explained it to me because nobody ever did then, s’how it was--I wasn't but a fledge. Now then, Angelus, he--”  
  
It wasn’t often, anymore, that Spike would spin her a tale of the bad old days. Maybe he figured she was now old enough. Or he was.  
  
He’d made it completely clear it would be impossible to drag him back to the point. So he was cracking the one-inch stock into stake lengths with his hands and regaling Dawn with the unsuitable, gruesome, perverse part when Buffy came out onto the porch, looking around under her hand. “Oh, there you are,” she called, and came toward them. “What’cha doing?”  
  
Holding out her bare green chilly toes for Buffy’s admiration, Dawn said, “Spike is being incredibly non-PC and I think I’ve been blinded with balderdash into promising to die a virgin, but I’m not entirely sure, it was all so philosophical and like that.”  
  
Buffy did a blinking take, pushing a sheaf of uncombed blonde hair off her shoulder and not-so-incidentally revealing a freshly swollen and reddened mark low on the right side of her neck. “Well, I was only gonna say, I’ve invited Giles for supper. He says he has news, so I thought we might as well all hear it together….” Her voice trailed off uncertainly. Face twisting, she demanded, “Die _what?”_  
  
Dawn and Spike traded a glance that meant Mall _now_ and efficiently separated to collect the necessary.  
  
**********  
  
At a junction in the pipes nearest the factory, Spike set the parcels down and had a solitary cigarette before going further. Buffy, that was one thing, she’d never live to grow old, never die of a disease, and she had that Slayer healing thing going, near as good as a vamp, repairing all damage, both obvious and subtle. But Bit, now, that was a different matter. Coming back into this reformed body, she’d been given the option of continuing always exactly as she was: seventeen because she said so and the right date had rolled ‘round. Said that was what she wanted and had fixed on, but Spike didn’t know, there seemed some wavering from that direction lately. And anyway it seemed an Elvish kind of immortality, like that Arwen Evenstar--eternal youth, sure, but only if they stayed out of harm’s way. Knife or a fall off a roof, drowning, fire, that sort of thing, that’d kill ‘em just like anybody. Spike didn’t want to be the one to put that to the test. Decided he wouldn’t smoke anymore around her, or any of the SITs, or basically anybody with the habit of breathing.  
  
Been a pariah, he had, for the past decade or so. Nothing new, just one more reason to mind what he did around the humans, that were so fragile it scared him sometimes. That would be where his unlife was, far ahead as he could see. So begin as he meant to go on.  
  
Stubbing out the butt, he got the parcels together and put them into the shopping bag, which he hadn’t bothered doing before, then walked the rest of the way. He stopped at the ladder to announce himself, and the sentry up above was a fledge (that Toby or some such stupid name) who dithered and then let him come, though of course he didn’t know the password. Unsatisfactory. Spike set down the bag and belted him as soon as he was clear of the hatch.  
  
“You go by what you were told. Let just anybody past, you won’t last long.”  
  
“Knew it was you, perfectly plain,” the fledge protested, from the floor. “Smelled you, and--”  
  
“That don’t signify. Anybody don’t say the password, an’ you ain’t been given a go-ahead in advance, you leave the hatch locked and yell for somebody else to make the call, if you’re not sure.”  
  
“But I _was_ sure!”  
  
“Shut up. Tell Michael I’m here.”  
  
The fledge looked, if possible, even more nervous. “But he’s…busy.”  
  
Cocking his head, Spike made out raised voices from out past the barrier wall. Mike and…Kennedy, it was, and the fledge nervous of approaching, afraid of becoming collateral damage. Spike told the fledge to carry on, and left the bag by the hatch. Passing, he noticed the Dalton in the office, bent over the computer, but getting things sorted with Mike had to come first. Find out how the lad meant to play things, then make the hand-off in good order, plain, where everybody could see.  
  
Or there’d have to be a fight, which was in nobody’s best interests.  
  
The two of them, arguing, were out in the open space, everybody else backed off or up in the rafters: staying well clear. Kennedy had a clipboard and was waving it about, looking as though she’d try to swat Mike with it any minute, absolutely within Mike’s striking distance, which was dumb, but maybe she’d forgot to take such things seriously in her time with Spike. So that would have to be sorted, too.  
  
Arms folded to not just swat her, Mike was glowering and looming, like he did--Angelus’ get, after all: same demon, and like calls to like--and spending much too much time and attention on whatever was wrong between him and Kennedy, considering everything else going on. Should just deal with it and go on. But that would be for Mike to learn and not up to Spike anymore.  
  
Mike flicked him a glance as he approached, but it took Kennedy longer to notice him. When she did, she wheeled around (that put Mike, unwatched, at her back, and that was wrong, too) demanding heatedly, “Spike, am I some kind of concierge, goes with the place? Did you give me away and not tell me? Where does he get off, giving me orders?”  
  
“Getting that sorted now. Michael, I’m claiming the SITs for mine. Slayer’s, actually, but mine as far as here’s concerned. Marked ‘em, now, so that’s how it will go. You need ‘em for something, you go through me or the Slayer, either one. Oh, an’ I lessoned your sentry on the pipe ladder, and I shouldn’t have. Yours to see to, how that’s set up. Sorry. Wasn’t thinking.”  
  
“That’s all right,” Mike responded slowly, watching him steadily, accepting the awkwardness of what they were doing.  
  
It was mostly the fledges, Spike noted, up along the rafter-beam. Showed sense: when there was a scrap, no matter who between, it would be the fledges that got hurt first.  
  
Spike had been most of the day working up to this, how it should go. Going to the mall first, that had been good. No issues of dominance, ever, between himself and Bit. Got himself some fresh plain T-shirts, black, nothing special, but Bit, she’d enjoyed choosing them out for him. And got herself one of those wash-off marker tattoos of a star on her cheek, all pleased with that. Lovely and quick and shrewd and glad-hearted, she’d done a lot to settle him down to the unheard-of thing he was doing and had meant to do all along.  
  
Scratching an eyebrow, Spike went on, “Came up to collect my bike. Few other things. On account of I won’t be up here so much. Got other things to see to. Except where I say directly, whatever Michael says, goes. You all, you go by his word an’ his authority. He’s got that already pretty much settled, I expect, but I don’t want anybody in any uncertainty whatever that he’s who you have to mind. Anything I want done, I’ll relay through Michael. Like about the sweeps an’ all. This place, an’ blood deliveries for the fledges, that’s all set up now like it should be. So now Michael, he has the running of it. So I can tend to other things, like I said. You got any problem with anything, you go to Michael with it, or whoever he says. You hear that, Huey?”  
  
“Hear you, Spike,” Huey answered, from back by the wall.  
  
“Then that’s sorted. Michael, this all suit you?”  
  
Mike knew what this was: a thinly disguised abdication. Kept any change of expression off his face; but he smelled sad, and uneasy.  
  
They both knew Spike’s role as titular Master of Sunnydale had to continue--neither Mike nor his regime would survive without it, without Spike plainly seen, and felt, to be in charge. But for Spike to cede to Mike the day-to-day running of things, and to thereafter defer to that delegated authority--to another Master on his own ground, among his own people--could be an acceptable compromise, not requiring a fight to publicly settle the dominance.  
  
“Sooner you stayed,” Mike said wistfully, and likely there was some truth to that. Not a lot, but some.  
  
“Can’t. You need me for something, you know where to find me. An’ ain’t real eager to run a Supplice d’Allégance on you, Michael. Don’t neither of us have the time for that. Just have to trust you to be true. Like you have to trust me. Hell of a thing.”  
  
Mike nodded, acknowledging this terrible state of affairs, for vamps to have nothing more reliable than trust to keep them from each other’s throats. Blow that in a second, generally.  
  
Glancing at the rafters, Spike added, “Sue, you come down, follow along. Keep clear of Ken. Ken, you come along, too. Michael,” Spike said, strolling toward the barricade wall of big, dead machines, “there’s a couple of people I need you to keep boarding, ‘cause I ain’t got a place for them yet. But I want the use of them. Answerable to me. Sue, here…an’ the new Dalton. Need ‘em for doing my stuff, not be thrown out on sweeps or other risky stuff. Long as they make their manners to you and don’t start trouble, you let ‘em be, all right?”  
  
“Got no trouble with that,” Mike allowed. “Spike….”  
  
“Later,” Spike directed, as they passed through the barricade.  
  
Dalton, or Cyrus, was cranky today. For one thing, he was a brand-new fledge, and the blood ration was late today, and Kennedy was human, and though he knew he was forbidden to go after her, that barely registered. Second, if he couldn’t have Ken, he wanted Spike. But Mike was his sire, and Mike could beat him down and make him mind, and Spike sent Ken farther away, outside the glassed-in enclosure, and stood in the doorway himself while Mike enforced the necessary discipline. Spike noted that they both kept carefully clear of the computer, which normally Spike wouldn’t let any fledge get within falling distance of. But a Dalton without his materials was useless.  
  
Curled on the floor, Cyrus rubbed his bleeding nose and licked the hand, reporting, “That is truly annoying. Does that continue any considerable time, Sire? Master? Bizarre, uncontrollable urges. It’s almost like being a teen-ager again. A time I loathed.”  
  
Spike set a hip on the corner of the desk, looking down sympathetically. “Lasts till you can make it stop. Years, for some. But you look at Sue, here: turned just a few months ago, can control her demon pretty well if she keeps her mind on it. Michael, he’s your sire, he’ll teach you what he can, what you need.”  
  
“I could find nothing online,” complained Cyrus, pushing to his feet, only a little wobbly after a beating that would likely have killed a human. “Only some ridiculous mysticism. Master, I have nothing to do. I don’t have access.”  
  
“An’ you ain’t gonna have, neither. Ain’t gonna give you my log-in or passwords. But I’ll pull up enough for you to work on, offline, an’ have Red set up an e-mail account for you. When you get a piece roughed out, send it on to me, and then we’ll work on it together. Maybe there’s some way we can do that live, from different locations. Current piece is Russian…that’s the location, anyway. Some ice demons, six hundred years or so back. Cognate with Cyrillic, anyway--using that alphabet, close enough if you can make out the sounds of it in your head. How’s your spoken Cyrillic?” Talking, Spike had slid behind the desk, logged in, and was downloading the first document from his own personal directory in the Watcher Database. When the download commenced, he got his glasses out of the second desk drawer and put them on, so the screen resolved for him without squinting.  
  
“Wretched,” confessed Cyrus, looking ashamed and worried, like he thought he might get dusted for not knowing every language extant and all its cognates. “All but non-existent. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard it spoken.”  
  
“Well, skip that first one, for now,” Spike said, considering the list of alternatives as the first download finished, “Go for the one titled ‘Concerning Urns’ that’ll be second down.” Spike clicked that entry, starting the download. “And lose the contempt for the mysticism real fast, because what you’ll mostly be translating is spells, and a good third to a half of ‘em work. So don’t say ‘em aloud. Never. You clear on that, Dalton? Or Cyrus, whatever--”  
  
“But that’s _magic!_ ” Cyrus protested, in a scandalized tone suitable for referring to pornography.  
  
Looking up, Spike pointed out, “You’re here. You work it out. What d’you want to be called?”  
  
The fledge put a thoughtful forefinger to his lips. “I gather that’s the sire’s prerogative, to say how his get is to be called. But…. I gather that _Dalton_ is more a function than a person. Is my impression correct? Because no one other than you and my sire has designated me so.” Off Spike’s nod, the fledge continued, “If given the choice, then, I’d be ‘Cyrus, _the_ Dalton,’ to honor my predecessor and preserve continuity.”  
  
“Fine,” said Spike, who could possibly have cared less, but only with an effort. Starting the third download, he absently sent Sue to collect his bag and, when she brought it, flipped a plastic-wrapped cell phone and its boxed charger stand onto an open part of the desk. “This is yours. Keep track of it. Michael will give you my number. I have this one. Once we get rolling, we’ll likely talk or pass stuff back and forth at least once a day. This is the whole reason you’re here, so this is where all your attention goes.”  
  
“I understand,” replied the Dalton formally, folding his hands in front of him and bowing his head in acknowledgement.  
  
They left him unwrapping the charger, joining Kennedy waiting near the wall of machines. Going toward her, Spike was keenly aware of his mark on her and realized for likely the first time ever, his basic reaction to Kennedy was liking, not barely-controlled irritation. He felt proprietary toward her. She was property, accessible anytime he chose. He knew exactly where he stood in regard to her, and all that had been complex and difficult was rendered simple, comfortable, and direct.  
  
That Kennedy would have no such changed feelings toward him was pretty much a given. But it was easier on his end, anyway, which counted for something.  
  
He put his glasses in their case and slid the case into a pocket. “Kennedy, you don’t have to come up here anymore. Ain’t gonna be here myself, and ain’t gonna need…whatever it is, you been doin’ for me. I need you, I’ll yell. The rest of your time, it’s your own. Get you and Michael out of each other’s faces. But there’s a thing I’d like you to do. You and Sue and Rona and ‘Manda, if she’ll go for it. The three of you, if she can’t, some nights. Run your own patrols, those places you’re most likely to find fledges just rising. Stake ‘em or not, I don’t care. Main thing is to find out who turned ‘em. Since I took over as Master of Sunnydale, there’s been more fledges than adult vamps by something like a factor of four. Somebody’s making a real business of it. I want to know who. Appearance ain’t likely to do much good: at the time, humans are so locked into being scared and their first sight of game-face, they’re not taking in much. ‘Less they’re told, most vamps don’t know who sired ‘em. Location’s useful, though. Time of day, maybe. Were they come at from the left side, or the right? Was the vamp taller than them, or about the same? Did the vamp say anything? When you get started, you’ll think of other things. Sue, you’re point and lead. Kennedy, you plan out the patrols and take notes. Rona’s for third, or however the three of you decide to sort it.”  
  
“I’m lead?” Sue asked, quivering and excited. “And I get to go out? Every night?”  
  
“You all three of you know the drill. Should run well together. Soon as possible, Sue, you set your mark on the other two, but separate--one to look on and call ‘enough,’ case things start getting carried away. Then some other night, the other. It’ll keep ‘em safe from you, calm your demon down toward them. You’re let off all other patrolling and sweeps to do this, all three of you.”  
  
“I don’t think we need ‘Manda for this,” Kennedy reflected. “Three’s a good number, and ‘Manda has her midterms coming up.”  
  
Sue said, “Ken, you gonna have a problem about me at lead? Or me covering Spike’s mark?” Her voice ascended to a strangled squeak at the daring of it.  
  
“Oh, I imagine we’ll work something out, if you’re past the acute bitey phase,” Kennedy drawled, and shifted the clipboard to hold out her hand. When Sue cautiously took Kennedy’s hand, the shorter, dark-haired girl drew her in and hugged her, murmuring, “Welcome home, Sue.”  
  
The two SITs went off with arms clasped around each other, so it looked to Spike as though that might work out all right. “They’re gonna have some sort of Scooby thing,” Spike said to Mike, at his back, “tonight, after dinner. Sit in, if you want. Eight or so. Or I’ll relay back to you anything I figure you’d want to know. Whatever you say.”  
  
Mike laid a big hand on his shoulder and turned him, so they were facing each other, Mike looking sober and a bit wary. “No way you’re gonna just walk away from all this.”  
  
“Watch me,” said Spike flatly, lighting up now that the human was gone. Looking around at the big dark space and the lit cube, he went on, “Hate this place, near as much as Harris does. Hate being here. Hate doing this. Having to think it all out, every second--not just _do_. Schooled myself to it awhile, but it’s itch and misery and drought to me an’ always has been. Never meant to keep it. Just to get things settled an’ regular, so you wouldn’t have more to contend with than you could handle. Always meant it for you, Michael.”  
  
“That was the watch,” Mike guessed, pulling it from a pocket and considering it.  
  
“That…and other things. And already, things have changed between us. Always _have_ been changing between us, from the first. Ain’t gonna walk off on you now. Give you whatever space you want, an’ you’ll need it. But don’t want what you got. Not even a little. Slayer, she’s what I want and what I mostly have, as much as I ever will. Come down to it, she’s why I made this--to give her the space she needs. And a living place, not a devastation…or a battlefield. Thought I could see it farther along, tried to, but….” Spike shrugged. “Peace you made with her, working together on things, each respecting the other, that’s a fine thing. So maybe it was just as well I made such a mess of it all, so you had to go past me to keep it all from coming apart right there. Dunno. S’how it was, anyway.” Spike dropped the butt and stepped on it. “You’re welcome at Casa Summers anytime. Come through the pipes, call, and somebody will let you in.” Pointing, Spike added, “And you hurt Bit, I’ll still tear your head off, quicker than looking.”  
  
“Could try,” Mike responded, with a slow, spreading grin. “But there’ll be no need. You taught me right: no Dawn, never no more, that ain’t an option here.”  
  
Spike had his own ideas about that, but wasn’t gonna voice them to Mike. “Got to get going now: she’s waiting for me to collect her.”  
  
Glancing at the bag as Spike picked it up, Mike surmised, “Mall parking lot? I’ll come with. And she can pick who to ride pillion with.”  
  
Spike’s expectation of Dawn happily holding on, arms around his middle and warm cheek against his back, began to fade. He let it go. Her choice. Always had been. And he and Bit, they were another thing and always had been, too. Not as though she still bore his mark, after all, and well that was done, it would have been a nightmare and Buffy would never have stood for it. Made him faintly sick, even imagining it.  
  
“Then let’s get gone,” he said, heading for the outer door.  
  
“She always hates it if I make her late for dinner,” Mike agreed, rolling into step alongside.  
  
**********  
  
Dawn found it an interesting meeting, not least because everybody was there: all the original Scoobies except Oz and Cordelia, if you counted Cordelia, which apparently nobody did. Oz was missed, though, as he had been at Giles’ going-away party.  
  
Anya was all proud of having talked the Chamber of Commerce into funding a Downtown Watch, which funding would go direct to Spike, Inc., on condition that the streets were patrolled from sunset to sunrise, every single night. Most of the downtown merchants, having seen a conspicuous upturn in evening business since the sweeps began, had agreed to pitch in under the impression they were subsidizing a street gang, which in a way, they would be. That the street gang weren’t human and hunted in their free time, the same as other vamps, were facts Anya hadn’t considered it necessary to burden the Chamber with.  
  
Since no overhead and no wages were required, the weekly take would have been quite substantial, but of course it was protection money in all but name, which incensed Buffy and horrified Giles and Xander, and Spike and Mike had to try to explain to Anya that (1) trying to stop downtown hunting completely would provoke a general riot; (2) there weren’t enough vamps in the colors to cover even most of the downtown 10/7 or so; (3) Spike wouldn’t authorize it and Mike wouldn’t do it because it left no open time for the important vamp activities of drinking, fornicating, and brawling; and (4) all in all, it was far too much like actual work to go down well with the troops. They’d be angry and bored, and angry, bored vamps tended to _do_ things not on the Chamber’s list of approved activities.  
  
While Anya sulked at her under-appreciated commercial coup, Giles diplomatically suggested that the matter be tabled for now and reviewed at a later date.  
  
Then, with diffident and unhappy resolution, Giles dropped his bombshell: no more tribute blood. Apparently some Council operative in France had heard about Spike’s claiming the title of Master of Sunnydale on the international demon grapevine. From that to the red-on-black recruiting website was no huge leap. And it had all unraveled from there, almost instantaneously. Nobody ever claimed Council intelligence (in the sense of spying) was bad--after all, they’d been locating and identifying Slayers for centuries--or that the Council was stupid. But few had ever had reason to claim the Council was altruistic or generous, either. A portion of the Council had seized Giles’ absence to ram through a nullification of the grant to the notorious (and evidently active) vampire, William the Bloody.  
  
Spike went ballistic. Worse than when the tribute blood had been offered in the first place. In graphic terms he listed all the reasons he hated the Council, itemized starting a century past, with their willful misinformation about vampires, and continuing through to the present, with their barbarous, niggardly, authoritarian, treacherous, obtuse treatment of the one treasure of which they were the inadequate custodians: the Slayer. On his feet, at the top of his voice, spinning and slicing the air with bladed hands, punching it with furious fists.  
  
Not even Buffy could get in a word edgewise.  
  
“Hate the fuckers! Worst thing about the First, it wasn’t thorough enough by half. Slaughter a few dozen Potentials, blow up the bloody ugly Georgian architecture, but leave as many of those gits standing as they offed. Try to accomplish something, set something up that could last, God damned fucking vipers cut the ground right out from under you first chance they get! Miserable penny-pinching pissants!”  
  
Still blazing, Spike flung himself away down the hall. The back door in the kitchen slammed thunderously as final punctuation.  
  
Willow offered shakily, “I think Spike’s kinda upset.”  
  
Standing by the couch, Giles took off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. “I anticipated he…. But he had to be told. No alternative. He was fair: didn’t assume I was responsible or condoned such…. He’ll manage. He always has. A setback, true, but not…not utter disaster.”  
  
“So,” said Xander, leaning against the wall, holding a can of beer. “What do you guys think of the new front window?”  
  
Mike’s phone buzzed. He rose to get it out of his pocket and stood with it held to his ear, thoughtfully frowning, and was in Buffy’s way when she started to go after Spike. So Dawn bolted in pursuit and slammed the door behind her too, scanning the dark yard from the porch. No Spike. Then she smelled cigarette smoke and slowly followed it diagonally across the grass until she was standing under the big corner maple.  
  
She heard Spike’s voice murmuring quietly and looked up until she located him: about halfway up in the tree, seated astride a branch, back against the main trunk. The coal of his cigarette disappeared, and there was a tiny beep as he shut off the phone.  
  
Dawn performed a slow clap. The next thing she knew, she’d been grabbed under the armpits, lifted, and plopped side-saddle across the branch, with Spike perched next to her, farther out the branch, holding her until she found her balance.  
  
“What gave me away?” he asked, cheerful and companionable.  
  
“No, it was a very convincing rant,” Dawn assured him. “Reduced Giles to incomplete sentences, even. Just the small problem that you already knew. Had to.”  
  
Spike chuckled. “Rona called, little while ago. Just after we’d got back. I’d left my new number on their machine. Hospital wouldn’t fill her standing order or whatever the hell they call it because the last invoice had been refused. All worked up about it, didn’t know what she should do. Fuck ‘em. Fuck ‘em all, the bastards.”  
  
“Then why the tirade?”  
  
“Don’t need ‘em anymore, the great galumphing gits.” Angry, Dawn had noticed, Spike sometimes ran to promiscuous alliteration. “Would only have added it to the fledges’ ration anyway. Not gonna give ‘em the satisfaction, though, knowing how it’s actually fallen out. Knowing I’m off the dead stuff altogether, an’ Buffy, she’s all right with it. Goddam honorarium, pat on the fucking head for being a nice harmless bloody lapdog of a vamp, grateful for their charity. Knew it wouldn’t last. Never depended on it. Bloody back-stabbing parsimonious wankers.”  
  
Spike was truly angry and stirred-up, Dawn decided, although not to the extent he’d pretended. He added moodily, “Nothing they do toward me, now or that before, signifies anyway. It’s how they treat Buffy, or try to, that drives me spare. And what she’s got rightly coming, I pry out of ‘em with the translation. Now I got that Dalton, get that caught up in a week or so. Can put in the time on it now, if Red will let me use her laptop, nights when she don’t need it. Till the kitty’s built up, get the mortgage paid off an’ all that, and what Harris has been doing, get the house right again….”  
  
“If you’re through with your theatrical snit, shouldn’t we go back inside?”  
  
“Presently…. Bit, told you might be I’d have to throw you into something, risk you like I’d risk myself for a good enough reason. You still game for that?”  
  
Dawn felt her breath catch, and every bit of courage she had seemed to drain out through her dangling toes. “Yeah, I guess. What are you throwing me into?”  
  
“Gonna have Michael set up a meeting with Digger. Need to exchange pax bonds for that. Gonna require that Digger put up Rayne. And I’ll put up you. Like before.”  
  
Swinging her feet, Dawn picked nervously at her sweater, recollecting the old frog-faced vamp and the huge stash of indiscriminately chosen candy he’d figured was appropriate for keeping a young girl quiet, not bursting into hysterics at capture and captivity.  
  
“Rayne knows what I am,” she said quietly. “He knows about the Lady. Knows about the Keyness. More than I do, probably. And my…other qualification. Last night…he was in my head. Checking around about this and that. It was me they came after.”  
  
“I know. But you an’ me, we’re the only ones that do. Like to keep it that way.”  
  
Dawn nodded slowly, seeing it. “Mike, he’ll have a fit. You haven’t told him yet.”  
  
“Not sure how he’ll jump, when I tell him that part,” Spike confirmed soberly. “Not a good time to be at odds with Michael--still too much unsettled there. Need to get it squared away with you, first. So you can help get Michael to go along with it. Let on it’s just the same as before and you’re not worried about it. Even if you are.”  
  
“Buffy?”  
  
“Believe I can manage Buffy. So long as you can stay steady about it. But it’ll take the both of us to finesse Michael, the way things are.”  
  
“Is it? Is it the same as before?”  
  
Spike took time lighting a cigarette, then made an annoyed noise and pitched it away, down on the grass. “Don’t expect it will fall out that way, no.”  
  
“Gonna tell me why?”  
  
“Can see the shot. Where the balls need to be. Matter of balance, angle, force, reaction. How they hit, how they’ll bounce.”  
  
“In other words,” Dawn deduced, “ _no_.”  
  
“That Rayne, he’s got too much access for me to spell it out much, even for myself. Just feel it, see it shaping and coming together. Thing is, he looks but he don’t see. ‘Cause he don’t know the proper value to put on things. Doesn’t know what it means, that I’d risk you and you’d agree to be risked, just on my word. Doesn’t know what it means, that Rupert would set everything down to come back…before that Rayne had dragged me off to a place I couldn’t come back from. Doesn’t know what it means that the Lady will delegate what she wants done, keep to the limits she’s set herself.”  
  
“Doesn’t know,” Dawn cut in, remembering Giles’ warning, “what it means to have the Triune Goddess fully arrayed against him. So the precautions he’ll take are the wrong precautions. His staff is too long and he’s digging in the wrong place. But will he accept being surrendered as a hostage to the meeting? A pax bond? Could Digger make him? Because Rayne doesn’t know vamp ways.”  
  
“A chance to see Rupert again, and gloat, and preen, and Rupert can’t do a damn thing about it? He’d fight for the chance.”  
  
“I’ll do it,” Dawn decided. “I don’t know what it is, but I’ll do it.”


	17. Balance

Up in the middle of the night because it was his time to be awake and his time sense was all turned around, because the bed was really too small for two without the distraction of sexual stacking, because he was restless and couldn’t settle, because he’d wakened from a dream of burning, because he was vibrating inside from the permitted quick, charged sips of Slayer blood that were all he allowed himself, and likely for a hundred niggling unexamined reasons, descending the stairs with the vague intention of ducking outside for a smoke, Spike set his bare foot on a magazine. The slick pages slid. A flailing cartwheel punctuated by bumps and bangs landed him in a blinking, startled heap at the bottom.  
  
Gathering himself, he charged back up the stairs, snatching the magazine and rolling it into a tight cylinder as he barged into Dawn’s room. “So what’s this, then?” he barked, shaking the cylinder as evidence. “You got some little navvy I don’t know about, s’posed to trail behind and pick up after you? What if it’d been Red on the stairs? Or you? What the hell’s the _matter_ with you?”  
  
Pushing up in bed, knuckling her eyes, Dawn responded indignantly, “What the hell’s the matter with _you_ , Spike? What are you doing in here?”  
  
“Can’t be bothered,” Spike rolled on, “leave your trash any old where--” He could see it so plainly: Dawn or Willow slumped unmoving at the foot of the stairs, gone in an instant: one careless move and gone beyond recovery. They were so fragile, the humans. So easily broken. Couldn’t trust them to protect themselves from the ordinary dangers so how could he expect them to survive actual threats?  
  
They were both yelling, Spike ranting on about carelessness and Dawn demanding why he was blaming her, it could be anybody’s magazine, and Spike flinging it at her because sure, Buffy was real likely to be toting around an issue of _Seventeen_ featuring the vacuous faces of some boy band, when Willow came in a blue robe and fuzzy slippers, hesitantly asking, “Is something wrong?”  
  
“Insane-o Spike’s been sleepwalking--” Dawn accused, pitching the magazine back at him.  
  
Spike slapped it aside. “Have not!”  
  
“--and fell downstairs and somehow it’s all _my_ fault--”  
  
“ _Is_ your fault! Have to watch you every fucking minute--!”  
  
“Get out! Get out! Get out!”  
  
That was when Buffy weighed in. Or rather the Slayer, armored in a silky green robe he’d had off her not two hours ago, not letting on she knew she smelled all warm and delicious, not caring to know what had happened, just demanding that they all shut up and settle down and Willow meanwhile protesting that _she_ hadn’t done anything, had just heard the bang and then the yelling, and Spike wasn’t gonna hang around for the Slayer to pass judgment, wasn’t gonna try to explain himself to her because that never worked, total lost cause there.  
  
He spun off, pushed past the Slayer and slammed down the stairs, barefoot and bare-chested, grabbing his duster off a hall peg in passing. Out to his new motorbike and straddling it, getting the engine roaring full-throated before pushing the bike off the kickstand and screeching away. The chill wind felt good in his face as the street lights flashed by overhead, switching between bright and dark and then a steady blur.  
  
Noplace left to be that was his, that he had the ordering of. Just out in the nowhere, moving fast and alone in the dark. All wound up inside with fury and dread and the sense that he was crooked, off, unbalanced in some way despite the bike humming along straight and sweet and true, slanting into a curve and straightening again, arrowing ahead as he sent it.  
  
Tired of being slow and careful, examining every detail. Sick to death of it, actually. The headlong motion was good but not enough. Hadn’t dared show his face at Willy’s for a month. All cautious and prudent. Hell with that. Duck in, get a bottle, then out again before any trouble could gather. What was the harm in that?  
  
If he kept moving fast, nobody could catch or confront him. Maybe outrace even the sunrise.  
  
**********  
  
There were advantages to being unemployed, Buffy mused, and one of them was sleeping late. She stretched luxuriously, finding herself just slightly lame and sore in good places. Having lazily dressed and brushed her hair, she mooched downstairs to have breakfast. Or would it be brunch?  
  
Finding Dawn glooming over a bowl of soggy cereal, Buffy did a take and counted back: yup--Monday. “Why aren’t you in school?”  
  
“Didn’t feel like it. You’ll write me a note, right?”  
  
“Are you sick?” Despite Dawn’s ducking, Buffy pressed the back of her hand to Dawn’s forehead. Their mom always did that but hadn’t revealed the mom-secrets behind it. Buffy wasn’t sure if it was good or bad that Dawn’s forehead was cool. Was her nose supposed to be red, or did that just mean she’d been crying?  
  
“Sick of some things,” Dawn grumped, plashing her spoon on the top of the wilted flakes and milk. “Like Spike being all sensible and normal, then blowing up over nothing.”  
  
“At least without furniture breakage this time,” Buffy commented lightly, opening the fridge and checking for eatables. She found some vanilla yogurt and uncapped it, banging the fridge door shut with her hip even though she intended to get some juice, too. She felt guilty at the idea of leaving the fridge open in the meantime. In the kitchen, momrules still prevailed, like a spell.  
  
As Buffy spooned up yogurt and reached down a glass from a cupboard, Dawn continued moodily, “He didn’t come home last night. Why is he back, when he’s not back? When he doesn’t stay?”  
  
“I guess he has a lot going on right now,” Buffy replied vaguely, untroubled. “It’s sort of like he’s out of work, too: doesn’t quite know what to do with himself.”  
  
“Yeah: going on in his head!” Dawn sneered and irritably brushed hair back from her face. “It’s like…he’s been pulling away, and pulling away, and now he can’t stop. Can’t be close without getting all fidgety and weird. I thought we were good. Yesterday we had toe-bonding and everything, and then the mall, and racing Mike home and beating us even though he had to run red lights and cut over onto the sidewalk to do it. Then one lousy fucking magazine slides off the pile I was taking up to my room, and I was gonna go back for it but there was this song came on the radio and--”  
  
“Watch the French,” Buffy cut in coldly.  
  
“Why? How come Spike can get away with twenty synonyms for ‘fuck’ and crude body parts and insane-o British swear-words, and I say ‘drat’ and you’re all over me?”  
  
“Because he’s a century-plus older than me, and it’s how he thinks, and I don’t expect ever to change how he thinks. It’s taken him….” She counted on her fingers. “…six years to quit smoking in the house. Whereas you are a growing girl and there’s time to stop the bad habits before they get locked in and automatic. Girls swearing isn’t attractive, Dawn.”  
  
“Oh, great, attractive. Like I’m ever gonna have a love-life, dates, have to keep myself untouched and pure so I can be a frelling virgin sacrifice-- I’m allowed ‘frelling,’ right?”  
  
Buffy pulled out the bottle of OJ, shut the fridge door, and thoughtfully poured. “What’s that all about? The virgin thing?” Buffy remembered Dawn referring to that yesterday, sounding resentful and frightened.  
  
“Oh, the usual: overprotective vamp, doesn’t want me growing up, changing. Put me in a box if he could,” Dawn replied, but her eyes slid away evasively. “Scared I’ll get hurt in ways he can’t prevent or help. Like the frelling magazine on the stairs. Blew up at me not because I forgot it but because in his head, it was me that had fallen and that scared him. I understand that part. But then why does he….”  
  
As Dawn’s voice trailed off, Buffy put the juice away. “Is this about Mike?”  
  
“Isn’t everything? What _is_ it about Summers women and vamps? I just let him feed from me a few times and he thinks that’s the same as going steady or something. No more mark, look at me, all markless, but here he still is, hanging around, making sad puppy eyes at me, except they’re grey, so it would have to be Alsatian eyes. Wolf eyes, maybe.” Pushing away the bowl, Dawn went to the cabinet above and to the right of the sink and pulled down a box of pop-tarts from the top shelf: the one Buffy couldn’t reach without jumping or kneeling on a chair.  
  
Buffy drank juice cold enough to make her sinuses quiver, considering carefully. Once, she’d have dusted Mike without a second thought. Your basic anonymous vamp. Now, though, she knew he was key to what Spike had been setting up and that he and Spike had connections between them--vamp connections and mostly unaccountable, but connections, all the same. You could see it in the way they danced around each other, suddenly breaking and going head to head, then dancing back again short of finality. Neither wanted the other gone but always testing each other sort of in a guy way, love all mixed up with antagonism, dominance games, and weird vamp one-upmanship according to rules no human could hope to understand.  
  
Looking into her glass, Buffy asked, “Is Mike…pressuring you?”  
  
“God, no!” Dawn blurted, slapping down the toaster lever. “All gentleman-like, treats me like I’m made of spun glass, for all he calls me ‘Dawn Dragonslayer’ and has to know better. He’s barely risked a hug!”  
  
“Then…what’s the problem? The wolf eyes, or that the eyes aren’t wolf enough?”  
  
“Oh, it’s all messed up,” Dawn wailed, face crumpling and the tears starting to flow again though she tried to fist them away. “And it’s gonna be messed up worse when Mike finds out--”  
  
Setting the glass on the countertop, Buffy gathered in her sister, noting absently that Dawn could lower her head and sob directly into Buffy’s shoulder. Might need to kneel on a chair for that too, one of these days. Buffy asked, “Finds out what?” and alarms went off in her head as Dawn went all stiff and pulled away, ripping off a paper towel to hide her face in.  
  
“Oh, nothing. Well, something but it’s just an idea, not really a plan, Spike doesn’t do plans anymore, all retired or something. I know where I stand, it’s not that, it’s just that I’m not all that keen on standing there. I’m sure Spike will talk to you about it too. Eventually.” Dawn crumpled up the paper towel, disclosing an anxious _Oops: have I blown it?_ face.  
  
As the toaster went off like a gunshot, Buffy replied calmly, "I'm sure he will." And she was really, really sure he would--the second she could get her hands on him.  
  
She went back upstairs for her cell phone and punched the #1 speed dial. She made a face when Spike’s new phone obediently rang…from the top of the chest to the right of the bed.  
  
The way he’d barged out at 3:12 in the morning, it was lucky he’d had his bike keys and cigarettes.  
  
The soul was back. Buffy was trying to stay in patient, good-girlfriend mode. But there were limits.  
  
**********  
  
Returning from her last class of the day, Willow turned from shutting the door to find Spike standing in the front room.  
  
In the full glare of sunlight.  
  
Through the new window.  
  
Besides the natural startlement and successive self-remindings that, though odd, this was not a suicide in progress, he was an arresting sight: he shone--as though the window were a large rectangular spotlight trained on him. All stark toner black and chalk white, every detail blazing and vivid. But it was an illusion. Invoking mystical sight with a blink and a gesture, she found his aura damped down to nearly nothing, not flared into immense wings of sparkling energies. About vamp normal. Which in turn meant just a hair above what an actual dead body would generate. The signature of the animating _animus_ (she’d given up calling it a demon as imprecise, superstitious, and prejudicial).  
  
When she went in and bent to lay her bookbag and purse on the couch, he greeted her absently, “’Lo, Red,” without turning.  
  
“Spike, I’ve been wanting to talk to you, but there’s been no chance. About a lot of things. Mostly what happened in the alley, but there’s other stuff, too. I have a list.”  
  
Glancing around, he quirked an eyebrow. “Don’t doubt it in the slightest.” Facing the window again, he added, “Slayer’s out, an’ Bit’s at school, I expect.”  
  
Willow knew different but didn’t want to get into that now. “You shouldn’t depend on me,” she announced bluntly. “I never faced an experienced mage before, and every shield I threw up, he knocked down. Easily. As though it was just nothing.” She sat on the couch, working her hands together. “Giles says I shouldn’t be upset about it because a chaos mage can call on and use forces an earth mage won’t touch. He said those forces gradually eat out and randomize anybody who attunes themselves to them, and the effects are short term, dissipating into the normal order of things. But I am. Upset.” Looking up anxiously, she realized what she hadn’t noticed before: Spike’s eyes were unblinking, blank, and unfocused. Not following or watching whatever was passing on the street. The blue irises huge and whited out by the steady blaze of sunlight, and the pupils contracted to pinprick points. She wondered if he was _on_ something.  
  
“Can see it but not go out into it,” Spike remarked quietly, as though he hadn’t heard what she’d been saying. “Sends my demon gibbering terrified, for all it feels good. Bright, warm. Doesn’t connect up, like.”  
  
“Enjoying a panic attack?” Willow inquired wryly.  
  
“Trying to make the demon accept that what I know doesn’t match up with what is.”  
  
“And how’s that working for you?”  
  
Finally, Spike blinked. “Not so well,” he admitted, turning, leaving the light. He settled on the stairs, a few steps up, and leaned against the wall with his eyes shut. He reported, “Got all sorts of red and black smears swimming around. Can’t see a thing, with them between. That the way it’s s’posed to be?”  
  
He’d been looking straight into the late afternoon sun, Willow realized, and had another set of layered reactions. (1) That was an insane thing to do, everybody knew better. (2) He was a vampire and therefore (3) all damage healed so (4) it probably meant nothing at all, except as an idle experiment deliberately freaking out his demon (animus) which (5) was strange but probably only idiotic, not insane. About on a par with sticking your finger in a candle flame to see what would happen.  
  
Leaning on the flat-topped newel post, Willow replied tartly, “If you haven’t burnt out your retinas, it will pass. You still busy freaking out, or can you listen now?”  
  
“Heard you: feel you failed, can’t be depended on. Wound up about that and wondering what use you are, if your magic’s not enough. Feel you let everybody down an’ they’re disappointed and don’t think so much of you as they did. Feel like you ought to have _LOSER_ tattooed across your forehead and worried it might already be there, plain to everybody but you. Feel obliged to warn everybody not to trust you--me, for example. Something along about like that, yeah?”  
  
“I didn’t say all that,” Willow responded in a small voice.  
  
“That’s what I heard. Sounds real familiar, if you hadn’t guessed. Got to learn your limits all over again. Accept what you can’t do…and what you can. Bit of technological hocus-pocus, I can stand in the light. But that’s a lie, an’ I know it’s a lie, and have to _keep_ knowing it’s a lie because the truth would turn me into cinders in a second. Because of what I am. You’d think I’d have that all settled by now, no surprises.”  
  
“Always surprises. Just…not always good ones. So all right: you understand.” There was no sting in his accurately quoting chapter and verse about her uncertainties because he was stating his own. Willow relaxed marginally, knowing he wasn’t going to be horrible to her about her failures and misgivings.  
  
“Been thinking about it. Amongst other things….” He rubbed at his eyes, then opened them--locating her face, doing slow, cartoon blinks. “So what else is on your list?”  
  
“The smell. Is it really doing any good? Is it worth making more, since it doesn’t really _do_ anything, _mean_ anything, except for you enforcing it?”  
  
“And I’m not in a position to enforce anything anymore.” Again, Spike put words to what she’d thought but not said. “Dunno how Michael looks at it--if he’s gonna stay with that or let it go. Likely he hasn’t thought about it either. One more detail to take account of…. I’ll ask him. Tonight.”  
  
“Monday: patrol night.”  
  
“Yeah. He’s tagging along, get some things settled, him and the Slayer. And me.” Changing the subject, he went on, “Thing you could do, that would be useful. There’s better times to open portals, and worse times. Could be Rayne has enough power to grab it and tune it any time. But chances are, he’ll go for the optimal time--when the dimensional folds are at their thinnest and most strained. Less work to it. Be a real help if you could figure out when that would be.”  
  
 _I can do that!_ Willow reflected happily, though it was about like being asked to cut out paper dolls, compared to wielding the lightnings of real magic. A task for beginners. Mostly research. But it really, truly needed to be done, and she could do it. Spike still considered her as part of the team…that it sounded like he wasn’t altogether sure he still belonged to.  
  
She repeated, “‘Optimal?’” in a challenging, teasing voice.  
  
Spike sighed and leaned his head on the wall again. “Too much translation. Gets to you, it does. Which reminds me: trying to work out an arrangement with the new Dalton for the translation. Can I use your laptop, nights when you don’t need it, of course? And is there a way we could both be working on the same thing, same time, and talk back and forth about it?”  
  
“Sure: it’s called a telephone.” As Spike rolled his eyes, either at her snark or his missing the obvious, Willow went on, “There’s probably a way of multi-tasking with the word-processing program and a live chat on the same screen, but truly, it would be easier to just talk. And sure, you can use the laptop. I know finances are a bit strained until the next batch of translation gets turned in, so you don’t want to invest in another desktop right now.”  
  
“All right. Thanks. Anything else on your list?”  
  
“Yeah,” said Willow, considering him warmly and a little shyly. She knew it was personal, and touchy. “How are you? Since the tribute blood’s been stopped, are you getting enough to eat? There’s nothing, no blood, in the refrigerator….”  
  
Spike was silent a long minute, obviously deciding whether to say anything or shut her out. “I’ve been better,” he admitted finally. “As to that other, that’s no problem. Or not much. And no, I’m not goin’ back to pig’s blood out of a jug. Haven’t been knocked back so far as that…. Rayne, he’s pretty much walked over the both of us. An’ first you get mad, then you get discouraged. Just how it goes,” Spike said soberly, regarding his hands, fisted together on a knee. Looking up, he continued, “Thing is, to get past all that crap and start thinking, if one thing doesn’t work, what’s left, that might? Rupert’s beat him at least once, and Rupert can’t call on anything like the power you can. Talk it out with him. And find us that date. I’m figuring to have a meeting with Digger in a few days. Michael, he’s setting it up. Be good to know before then.”  
  
“I’ll get right on it,” said Willow, and started to edge up the stairs past him. Spike clasped her wrist, halting her.  
  
“Two things I’ve always trusted you for: always saying the truth, and never quitting. Still do.”  
  
Meeting his calm gaze, Willow felt herself blushing extravagantly. Finding nothing to say, she gave him a quick jerk of a smile, then hustled on upstairs, reflecting that what he’d said was nice but didn’t depend in any way, shape, or form, on her doing magic. Since magic was the thing in her life that she felt was most important, that defined her, she tried to decide if that was a good thing or a bad one.  
  
**********  
  
While Buffy and Mike talked patrol routes, Spike leaned over the open weapons chest as though deciding what to choose for himself. Actually resisting the impulse to barge right between them. Name the mark, make them take notice. Declare and decide something, not merely tag along.  
  
He’d never had any problem with Buffy leading out. On patrols, she called the tune. She was the Slayer.  
  
But with Mike added to the equation it was different, and Spike minded it more than he’d expected.  
  
He shut his eyes, trying to achieve balance, focus. Like he’d been trying all day and having shit luck doing it, too. Stare at the fucking sun--as if the sun cared. No kind of contest there, just dumbass tricks trying to make himself back off, settle.  
  
He thought, _Did it in the fucking wheelchair and took everything that bloody bastard Angelus threw at me when I was an idiot fledge, about a decade of it before he got the soul pushed into him and went all to broody shards and cat scraps. Well, nearly everything, there was that time in Paris… Never mind, fuck Paris. Endured the Supplice. Can do it now._  
  
But those things had been forced on him. This abdication, he was forcing on himself. Because it was necessary, and he knew it, even though it had about the appeal of cutting his balls off with blunt scissors and his demon wild with indignation over being told to back off, sing small, not challenge the new order of things in which Spike didn’t count for much of anything.  
  
Soul was no bloody help at all. Hadn’t an instinct for surrender like the instinct the demon had for dominance, and Mike’s choosing a fucking big battle-axe for the patrol wasn’t really rubbing it in, Mike wasn’t much for edged weapons and had used that sort of axe against the Turok-han so it would be the most familiar of what was on offer. Demon took it as provocation but it took Mike’s simple presence as provocation, itching for a fight, for putting the lad down and restoring the rightful balance of things with Spike his own master and answerable to none except as he chose. Which would make everything go smash, but the demon didn’t care about that, even liked the notion of everything coming loose and falling into jagged chaos.  
  
Spike was truly helpless if he couldn’t even keep his own demon in line, make it obey. And feeling helpless was what the demon raged against.  
  
Blinking at the weapons chest, Spike angrily grabbed up the usual weapon, a smallish hand axe, then slammed the lid down and went out on the front porch to have a cigarette and pace, pinballing off the railings.  
  
He barely noticed Dawn slipping outside and seating herself neatly on the front steps until she announced, “I’m waiting for the speech.”  
  
He gave her a favorless look. She had her chin lifted, looking straight ahead, plainly in a pissy mood.  
  
She went on, “Aren’t you gonna ask me what speech?”  
  
Spike made a derisive noise and wheeled into another circuit of the porch. No need to ask: plainly she was gonna tell him, asked or unasked.  
  
“‘I’m sorry I yelled at you, Dawn,’” she coached. “‘Sorry I behaved like an insane-o parental unit over a little innocent oops with a magazine and barged into your own personal bedroom and woke you up in the middle of the fucking night.’ _That_ speech. I’m waiting.”  
  
Buffy and Mike came out then, so Spike didn’t have to answer. When Dawn skipped down the steps and joined the formation at Spike’s right, hustling along with her head down and her arms tucked tight to her sides, Buffy registered the addition with a glance at Spike that was a silent demand for an explanation, then asked Dawn, “What, precisely, do you think you’re doing?”  
  
“I’m coming. Spike said,” Dawn replied in a mulish whine. “I’m the stake-carrier.” She shook the bag over her shoulder, sounding the wooden clunk of a couple dozen freshly cut stakes.  
  
When Buffy looked to him again, Spike admitted, “Told her she could. I’ll look after her.”  
  
Dawn had been whinging on about not being allowed to patrol for years, so likely Buffy would think there was no more to it than that. And as Spike had expected, she wasn’t about to get into a jurisdictional brangle with him in front of Mike. Frowning, Buffy said only, “You better,” and faced front, picking up the pace.  
  
Although Dawn lacked the endurance and native athleticism of the Potentials, she was an experienced runner and knew her place: to Spike’s right and no more than a pace behind. In Spike’s time with the SITs, she’d run with the pack as Spike’s adjutant, a role both useful and familiar.  
  
The fact that they were currently annoyed with each other had no effect on the deep compact between them. Dawn was here because Mike was here, and tonight, Spike was gonna tell them his intention about the pax bond.  
  
His awareness of Dawn loping at his shoulder--her warmth, the beat of her heart, the pull of her breath, the long-legged strides that steadily matched his yet still had something of a coltish scamper, nervous energy rather than Buffy’s determined striding-out--was comfortable, companionable. He’d missed it. Missed her. They were sufficiently in synch that as he turned his head, Dawn glanced around and was suddenly grinning, exhilarated with the motion and the night. Spike couldn’t help it: he offered his right hand, and Dawn clasped it, and there was no trouble between them anymore.  
  
It almost made up for it being Mike--quiet, for all his size; unbreathing; silent and steady as black nemesis--pacing at Buffy’s left, a decent distance away, allowing for the swing-radius of the battle-axe. Lead (the Slayer) and second ( _his_ place! _his_ role!) with secondary support and ammunition trailing behind. All in good order and understood, and hateful to his demon, which wanted to overtake and give Mike a hearty shove, enforce his rightful prerogatives.  
  
By how the street lights flared and brightened, he realized he’d changed aspect and with an effort damped the demon down. Jealousy was colossally stupid, he told himself: not as if she fancied the chap, after all. Buffy’s attitude toward Mike had never warmed beyond wary acceptance, and she’d stake him in a second if he set a wrong hand on Bit or marked her again. And yet somehow Spike had to open his hand and loose Dawn toward his enemies, risk her as he’d risk himself, and how could he imagine that, let alone do it?  
  
“Ow,” Dawn complained, twisting her hand in his punishing clasp until Spike realized and let go.  
  
Which was pretty much the shape of it, right there.  
  
**********  
  
Mike had turned out for the patrol in a fairly good mood since he had a secret and was itching to tell it. But it would have to be brought out right, in a way that would let it seem casual, not just to be showing off, bragging in front of Dawn, that he hadn’t expected to be along anyway. Had expected it to be just the Slayer and likely Spike, not Dawn along too. That bothered him. Wasn’t right, her being exposed to the same risks as the rest of them, just a human girl, after all. Hadn’t liked finding her at the theater, neither, and had words with Spike about it afterward. Thought it was settled because he’d made himself real clear about not liking it. But here she was again, and on Spike’s invite, too. So Spike as usual was doing whatever he pleased, taking no account of anybody else. Arrogant high-handed bastard, same as always, and no point expecting sense from such.  
  
So it wasn’t the same situation as he’d had in his mind, to let out, all casual-like, that he’d entertained himself in the course of last night’s sweep by fire-bombing every place he’d identified where Ethan fucking Rayne had laired up in Sunnydale.  
  
He’d saved the big, fancy place on Crawford Street for last, and it had gone up real nice, windows blowing out when the blaze got going good, nearby trees catching and lifting towers of flame that jerked and swayed like dancers, and the huge wash of sparks when part of the roof caved in. Fledges were nervous so he’d let them go on, not yet ready, himself, to stop watching the glorious destruction he’d brought forth. Only thing that would have made it better would have been seeing Rayne’s face when the news got to him, but you couldn’t have everything.  
  
Not as though Rayne owned the places, had anything invested in them. But he’d still know he’d been targeted and hit, even though no damage to him personally. He’d still know there was somebody out there who didn’t like him a whole lot and willing to put him on notice of that fact. Wouldn’t know who, neither, which might make him just the least bit nervous.  
  
Mike smiled to himself, then got down to business.  
  
The Slayer mostly targeted and took out fledges, which Mike had no objection to. Mostly he viewed it pretty much as Digger did: till a fledge could develop some control, it was a danger to itself and all other vamps in the area, since fledges had no sense and no caution and besides getting themselves dusted, they could rouse a general hunt of the villagers-with-pitchforks-and-torches variety and everybody have to lie low and starve for awhile till the hunt died down.  
  
The patrol routes were therefore centered on graveyards, where new-risen, confused fledges were most likely to be found. No surprise, Restfield had been re-colonized since Spike hadn’t been clearing it anything like regular for several months. Two of the mausoleums at the north end, where packs had laired up in the past, were occupied again on account of the convenient location.  
  
First one, Slayer went in and flushed the occupants, and Mike took ‘em down as they tried to escape. Beheaded the first couple as they came, then turned the axe and used the butt-end to punch through the chests of those that came after, all tidy and businesslike if he did say so himself. Checking to see if Spike approved, he found Spike leaning against a tree and smoking, paying no particular attention.  
  
So, fine. Mike had come out because the Slayer had asked him, not to show off his edged weapons skills to his claimed Sire or even to Dawn, for that matter. She was by the tree too, with a stake in either hand, ready to use it or pitch it to whoever wanted one. As the Slayer exited the crypt, Mike wandered over to the tree, figuring a stake or two might be handy for the close work.  
  
“Spare me a couple of those?” Mike asked, axe tipped comfortably over his shoulder, pointing a finger at the sack.  
  
“Sure. You take these, I’ll get more.”  
  
As Dawn passed over the stakes, Spike looked around, eyes greened halfway to gold, remarking, “You let her go in alone.”  
  
Mike held his temper, poking the stakes through belt loops where they’d be handy. “Her call, her choice. How she wanted to play it.”  
  
“You didn’t watch her back.”  
  
“Not a whole lot of room in a crypt to swing an axe. Weapon like this, best to stay back. You standing on some glue or something, kept you from going in, if that’s what you wanted to do?”  
  
“I cleared this crypt single-handed.”  
  
Dawn set both hands on Spike’s arm, pointing out, “He knows you did. He was here. So was I, remember?”  
  
“Point _is_ ,” Spike responded, as though through gritted teeth, “s’not about grandstanding now, for the effect. Point _is_ , this is a patrol. Lead and second. Second follows, watches the lead’s back. Or the lead could get hurt, real quick.”  
  
“Well, I wasn’t there,” Mike shot back, “when you were out running with your girls, making all these rules. I’m here because I was asked, fighting the best way I know. You don’t like it, you take it up with the Slayer. Ain’t heard her complain.”  
  
Standing with hands on hips, Buffy called, “What’s the hold-up?”  
  
“No hold up,” Dawn called back quickly, looking from Spike to Mike as though she thought she could impose harmony with her eyes. She smelled nervous. Something going on between her and Spike, something they neither of them had yet put words to but Mike could tell, all the same. So more secrets than his, simmering unsaid. Dawn added, “Just discussing tactics. All done now--right?” Her anxious eyes demanded agreement.  
  
Mike cocked an eyebrow at Spike, silently inquiring if he was done grousing now, if they could get on with it.  
  
Spike said, “Ah, hell,” and pitched the cigarette.  
  
Mike joined the Slayer and they moved out.  
  
**********  
  
Watching Buffy and Mike double-team a large, lumbering beastie a little like a horned hippo and Spike hang back yet again, like he wasn’t interested or didn’t care except for his eyes and his twitchiness, taking a glance and then jerking his eyes away, plainly seething but still doing nothing, so unlike himself, Dawn sidled nearer and muttered, “You’re so off, you’ve earned your own zip code.”  
  
For a few seconds, Spike didn’t react. Then he hitched a shoulder, turning away.  
  
“It’s what I’m out here for,” Dawn persisted in a whisper. “What we came to do. So just _do_ it, already! _Tell_ them! What are you waiting for?”  
  
“’F you’re so fucking eager, you tell ‘em,” Spike rejoined, checking on the fight’s progress with another of those wincing glances.  
  
As Spike retreated into the deeper dark behind a tall tombstone so old its lettering had weathered away, Dawn pursued, “Sure, fine: I _can’t_ , dumbass--some way, you never got around to telling me the particulars, and isn’t that amazing? Is it that you’re scared to spell it out because even I’m gonna see how lame it is? Is it yet another ingenious way of snatching disaster from the jaws of the merely so-so?”  
  
When his head turned, his eyes glinted golden. Dawn halfway hoped he’d flash out at her: give him something safe to vent at, break the inner paralysis, maybe. But he didn’t, displacing the impulse to actually do anything into lighting about his dozenth cigarette of the evening from the coal of the previous one. “Got to be set up right. Got to keep my head on straight, keep to the point.”  
  
“Oh, so we’re giving ourselves little pep talks now, are we?”  
  
Gazing past, Spike suddenly called, “Oi, Slayer! Watch out!”  
  
Dawn whirled to find out why.  
  
Three game-faced vamps had come out of noplace--probably heard the struggle and came to investigate if there was food in it for them. Since the blatting demonic beastie had just lunged at Mike, separating him from Buffy, the trio closed around Buffy, who had to choose between engaging the vamps and helping Mike finish off the enraged beastie. Had to choose between the sword she’d been using and the two stakes she’d accepted and stuck through her belt loops. She pitched the sword and went for the vamps bare-handed because they were already on her and there was no time.  
  
Spike was up on his toes, miming the fight with ducks and pulled blows but essentially not moving, which Dawn considered insane. Slapping a stake into his hand, she gave him a hearty shove, which seemed to be all he needed. Engaging the largest of the vamps, Spike spun him around, whip-kicked him in the face to push him away from the others, then proceeded to take him apart, joint by joint, in a textbook demonstration of all-out Spike ferocity. The vamp was almost certainly a fledge, to take on the Slayer even three to one. He would have had no chance to get Spike pissed at him in a personal way. But that was how Spike was behaving, systematically breaking bones and ignoring chances to dust the vamp outright. The fledge was being dealt nasty, bloody punishment for somebody else’s sins, Dawn thought.  
  
Maybe it was a good thing Spike hadn’t vented at her after all, if this was what he’d been holding the lid on.  
  
Buffy had pitched one of her pair into the side of a mausoleum. She went after the other with a stake in her fist. In less than a minute, that vamp was dust. The other, belatedly prudent, started running: head down, elbows pumping. Buffy took off after him, both vanishing like squeezed grapefruit seeds into the dark. Spike was still engaged in seeing how many more bones he could break before the fledge became completely helpless. Both the fledge’s arms hung useless and seemed dislocated at the shoulders. He could barely stagger because Spike had stomped his kneecaps. Only when the fledge went down and refused to move did Spike consent to end it. The burst of dust coincided with Buffy reappearing around the mausoleum, trying to recapture hair that had escaped her pony-tail, and with the beastie finally thudding to its knees with Mike’s axe buried in its neck. Spike straightened and stepped back as Mike set a foot on the beastie’s ribs to work the axe free. Buffy looked at them both as though not particularly pleased with either.  
  
Bending to collect the sword, she continued past to a stone bench flanked by two big planters of droopy, desiccated bronze chrysanthemums and plunked herself down there. “Now’s as good a time as any,” she commented, with a glance at Spike. “Enlighten us. About this virgin thing.”  
  
Swinging about, axe freed, Mike enquired flatly, “What virgin thing?” He looked to Spike first, then to Dawn: immediately making that connection.  
  
And though she’d already decided to let Spike make the running on this, since he knew the details she’d only guessed toward, Dawn felt compelled to blurt, “The meeting with Digger. Can’t have a meeting like that without pax bonds in place, naturally. To keep everything civil. Spike thought it would be a good way to get Rayne delivered into our hands. Our custody. If Digger can make him or if he agrees, considering Giles and all. Either way.” Nervously, Dawn spread her hands as though that was all there was to it or the rest should be obvious. Which she was afraid it was. Because Mike immediately said, “No,” in a voice past argument, staring at Spike.  
  
“‘No’ what?” Buffy asked, slower to make the leap because vamp customs took thinking about, weren’t automatic. Having finished refastening her hair, she sat looking up attentively.  
  
Dawn remembered to breathe. Her fingers found the taser in her pocket and made sure the safety was on. Her glance to Spike got no response, the bastard: if she was stupid enough to make the running, Spike wasn’t gonna step in and take the burden from her. “Well, we’ll need somebody as a pax bond from our side, of course. To swap for Rayne, to guarantee the meeting. Just like before. And…I’ll do it. Just like before.”  
  
“No,” said Mike again, grounding the axe head and folding his arms over the haft. “No way.”  
  
He and Spike stared at each other for a strained minute. Spike broke first, turning to Buffy, saying, “It’ll be all right. She wasn’t hurt before an’ won’t be now. Digger’s got no reason whatever to hurt her an’ good reason to keep her safe, if she’s traded for Rayne, that’s his partner now. That he needs. If Rayne won’t stand for swap, then that’s the end of it, right there. But it’s worth trying, to get Rayne into a little sit-down with Rupert and Red. Get some things ironed out there. _That’s_ the meeting, you see? What Digger says or does, that don’t signify.”  
  
“It signifies,” Buffy replied, “if he has Dawn. I don’t like it, Spike. And what’s that got to do with, well, the virgin thing?”  
  
Spike hung his head after shooting Dawn a glance. He ambled closer to the bench: sidling, slump-shouldered, full of jitters and twitches. Utterly unconvincing. Only his killing had been sincere. Because he couldn’t keep his hands still, he lit another cigarette, then gestured with it. “Well, that’d give her value, like. Mage like Rayne, he knows there’s power in such. Make him figure it for an equal swap.”  
  
“Yeah, I saw how mages value virgins,” Buffy shot back, leaned forward with elbows on knees. “Tied up to posts in the mall parking lot. Set afire. If it’s a reason to accept her, it’s also a reason to keep her.”  
  
Dawn put in, “Not unless Rayne’s with you guys, don’t you see? To Digger, I have no special value, except as half of the pax bond. No more than anybody, I mean. I don’t think old frog-face cares much about virgins, the one way or the other.” Or at least Dawn sincerely hoped he didn’t. Spike’s face was uncommunicative.  
  
“I’ll go,” Buffy decided astonishingly, and suddenly Spike had fifty dozen reasons why she shouldn’t, mustn’t, couldn’t. Because Buffy was a player, determining the balance, Digger might risk losing Rayne to kill her. Might even turn her, and where’d they all be then?  
  
When Spike paused, Buffy said, “I was just trying to be helpful,” in a small voice.  
  
“I know that, love, but you can’t--”  
  
Both Spike and Mike froze and turned like twin compasses pointing north. Game-faced, leaned forward, shuddering like struck tuning forks.  
  
“What?” Buffy demanded. “What is it?”  
  
Spike muttered a bad word, wrapping arms around himself, grimly regarding his boots. “Just that Rayne. Playin’ with himself again. With the Stone. Been doing that, lately, on and off….” He dragged himself back to the point. “So, no, love: can’t be you. Has to be Bit, and she’s agreed to it, haven’t you, Bit? Knows it will be all right.”  
  
Dawn, who knew no such thing, was prepared to lie like a trooper when Mike came out of his crouch: still one second, then still the next, but Spike somehow down and getting his knees under him in the interval. As Spike came up, Mike kneed him in the face. Spike came up fast again and barreled straight into him and they went at it, a blur of motion punctuated by the thud of boots and blows. All sudden, before even Buffy could lunge to intervene, Spike went bonelessly backward, and hit, and stayed, arms flung wide, not moving. Glaring down at him, still game-faced, Mike snarled, “Not putting up with your crap no more. Not running your messages. Meeting’s off.” He stuck his hand, and the taser in it, back into his pocket. He gave Dawn an impassive look, then stalked away, leaving the axe as it had fallen.  
  
Dawn was torn between running after him and keeping Buffy from doing the same. Considering that Mike was armed with the unexpected taser, the result wasn’t a foregone conclusion, and the last thing Dawn wanted to see was a serious face-off between Buffy and Mike, explosively wound up as she figured he was from the hellish threnody of the Stone and the Hellmouth singing to one another, that had likely set him and Spike off in the first place. So she dumped herself in front of Buffy and hung on until Buffy quit trying to lunge free or pry her off. They both ended up on their knees next to Spike, still unconscious from the taser charge.  
  
“I tried to support him, I really did,” Buffy wailed, getting Spike tipped up and then leaned back against her, his head lolling loosely in the crook of her arm. She bent to kiss his smoothed features.  
  
Dawn caught up one of Spike’s hands and held it, looking off the way Mike had gone.  
  
How great a disaster she’d just witnessed, all the ramifications, she couldn’t think out. But it was bad, awful, that the jittery alliance had collapsed. That Mike had broken with Spike over her coerced volunteering as a pax bond. Mike couldn’t hold things together on his own and he probably knew that. So he’d have to ally with some other player…which almost certainly meant Digger.  
  
Disaster.  
  
She was upset for them both and with them both--for Mike, departed in a regretful huff, breaking with her and with Spike rather than be a party to risking her, which made her feel at once infuriated, weepily touched, and despairing; and for Spike, finally unable to hold his temper for all his trying to keep himself backed off, cool, and reasonable, trying to get everybody to agree on his insane-o plan. It was just so frickin’ typical. Just so… _Spike_. She alternated between wanting to hug him and hit him.  
  
Anxiously patting Spike’s hand, waiting and dreading his coming to and realizing how totally messed up things were, Dawn was light-headed with relief: now she wouldn’t have to go.


	18. Splints and Patches

Buffy sat up abruptly in bed, roused not by motion but by the comfort and homeness that was Spike’s body against hers gone rigid with his absence, exactly like being in bed with a day-old corpse. She turned and held him, shook him. “Spike, wake up! It’s nothing, a dream. It’s OK: wake up!”  
  
Finally, he stirred and blinked at her: not altogether believing, not altogether back. His hand lifted to trail fingers down her cheek, wonderingly. “Buffy.” Then his eyes shut and he was shuddering in the dream’s aftermath. But it was OK now. He was awake, knew himself with her. He would come back on his own now. Buffy held him through the deep shuddering.  
  
“What was it?” she asked eventually. “The Hellmouth again?”  
  
“Dunno it’s the Hellmouth,” he responded, turning his face into her collarbone, tasting there. “Dunno. Only burning. Just…burning.”  
  
The force of her fingers sliding vicelike up and down the tendons of his neck would have been painful to anybody but him. But it was always him, and she better than anyone knew the power of true dreams--the ones that came strongly or often. Spike had them now, maybe had always had them, but she could deny that for him because she was outside and looked from a different place. “You won’t. I’ve got you.”  
  
“So you have.”  
  
“It’s OK,” she insisted.  
  
“If you say so.” He didn’t sound snarky or sarcastic--only vastly exhausted, too resigned to argue. He placed a kiss on the hinge of her jaw, then rolled away to sit on the bed’s edge, absently fisting his eyes. “You go back to sleep, love. I’ll muck about awhile.”  
  
As answer, she leaned forward, clasping him around the middle, her cheek against the flat of his shoulderblade, breathing warm against his skin the way she knew he liked. She loved the back of his neck, seeming always vulnerable to her, in need of her fingers’ support and reassurance. Her right hand lifted and resumed stroking there, thumbing the last of the stiffness and working it away.  
  
“You’d have done that,” he said after awhile. “Gone to be the pax bond. On my word.”  
  
“You helped with the class. My thing. I want to help with yours. The Slayer is a weapon. But I’m yours. All the way back and all the way forward.”  
  
He turned and held her hard, arms tight and fingers digging in: a force of holding that would have hurt anybody else. She felt it as a seizure of claiming. Not the body but what was inside the body reaching out, trying to touch the like part of her that was singing _I’d do anything, go anywhere, to keep this connection. You are the whole of my desire._  
  
Because he’d begun breathing, he knew it, heard it, even though she never had the right words or never could say it right except by silence, by touches, by the white-hot ferocity of loving him from moment to moment.  
  
He tasted at the mark, his tongue wet and cool--somewhere between wanting to bite down and wanting to heal it. Give her back to herself, whole and independent. So she bit his shoulder to say _No, I don’t want that,_ and felt him change against her. The thickened brow, the fanged mouth. The subtle shift of muscle and tendon all through him that was his demon, which she also loved and which loved her, all passionate, all urgency. When he needed to love her like that, she met him always with all her unacknowledged hungers, trying to force away all thought of befores and afters, to be wholly in the immediacy of the now, waiting with a separate suspense for the other orgasm of the _bite_. When it came, the fulfillment of his nature and her only chance to wholly surrender and satisfy her yearning for death, so she had no need to seek it elsewhere anymore, only with him, only this vital connection, she drifted a little while on the joyous rapture of it.  
  
She supposed she’d slept, because she woke. Alone in the bed, warm under the blue duvet, all untidiness smoothed away, with early light through the safe windows. Full of well-being and bodily happiness…and _starving_. She pulled on pajamas and a robe, used the bathroom, then went quietly downstairs. Light from the den made her surmise, and she leaned past the doorway.  
  
Spike was working at Willow’s laptop, frowning through the glasses, hair all askew as though he’d been plowing his fingers through it, in his usual indoor costume of T-shirt and jeans. Completely intent and absorbed, she thought: like a student methodically, frantically studying for final exams. Behind him, the window was bright with morning but had no power to hurt. The whole house was safe for him now and he’d made it so.  
  
He’d been moving away but all the while preparing to come back and be with her here. Not everything had failed. She should tell him so, make him know it.  
  
“Morning, love,” he said distractedly, keys clicking rapidly. “Just need to finish this last piece, then it can get sent. An’ that’s the mortgage, and another month’s feed for the fledges. If there’s any left in need of it. Michael, he trashed the computer up at the factory ‘fore he left. So I’ll have to impose on Red’s good nature, to have the use of this one awhile longer.”  
  
“Dalton tell you?” Buffy inquired, leaning on the doorway.  
  
He shook his head. “Sue. Called from Rona and Kennedy’s place. Was patrolling with them when Michael started taking things apart. Laired up there, she did, when she caught wind of the bust-up and so stayed clear of the executions. Dalton, he’s gone. Michael made him and unmade him. Likely for the best, considering. Likely should go up there later, see if any of the equipment’s left. Got that class tonight. What’d Anya say: civic center now?”  
  
“I think so. I’ll double-check with her when it gets to be a civil hour.”  
  
He was being all factual, dispassionate. So maybe it didn’t matter to him too much, the collapse of his regime. Buffy hung in the doorway a moment longer, watching Spike and considering, until her stomach growled audibly. She needed juice: lots and lots of juice. She pushed away and headed for the kitchen.  
  
**********  
  
Phone to his ear, talking and listening to Giles while pacing the downstairs hall, Spike absently rubbed his chest every now and again. The ache where the taser had hit him was just to the left of center. No mark, anymore, but a steady deep soreness. Right where a stake would go. Directly over the heart.  
  
Appropriate.  
  
Mike had been moderate, considering. Hadn’t wanted a full-out dominance fight, only wanted to put him down as fast and economically as possible. Had clearly figured Spike was gonna flash out at him, sooner or later, and come prepared. Thought it all out beforehand, the wanker, all cool and deliberate like his true sire, Angelus.  
  
No fair chance to settle things, fight it out. Just put him down like a dog that’d got just a little too annoying--swift, almost casual. Like you’d swat a fly. Then trash the factory, spend the rage on that instead of face to face, hand to hand.  
  
Holding the place that hurt, Spike was telling the Watcher, “You and Red, you cobble something together. Likely have a good couple hours’ custody of the bloke. To try to turn him from this, or find a weak place, or just keep him locked down that long.”  
  
“But you have no power base,” Giles’ voice responded, sounding embarrassed. “Why would Digger agree to meet with you now?”  
  
“Brag. Get off on it. Don’t care why the hell he does, so long as he does. I’m still standing. He still has to deal with me. Setting it up, that’s my lookout. Your job, and Red’s, to make good use of the time.”  
  
“Tomorrow, you said.”  
  
“Yeah. Red says the best time for another full-out try at opening the Hellmouth will be Friday--midnight or noon. Conjunction of planetary influences, footie scores, the price of fish, I dunno why the hell then, just what she says. So the meeting has to be set back from that, and one spare day for maneuvering room. Tomorrow, that would be good. Daytime. That will put the swap of the pax bonds belowground and it’s more controllable there. I’ll give you precise times in a little. I’ll catch Red after her--”  
  
The phone gave a little twittering signal. Holding it away and glaring at it, Spike recalled this one had the deluxe package, caller ID and call waiting, on it. Raising it to his ear, he said, “I’ll tell you when I know. Got another call coming in here. Talk to you later.” Squinting, he located the tiny button that ended the current call and picked up the other. “What?”  
  
“Spike,” said Sue’s voice. “We’re by the tunnel door.”  
  
“Who’s _we?_ ”  
  
“Me, Rona, and Ken. Huey. Couple others.”  
  
“Put Rona on.” Spike waited until Rona’s voice said something, then cut in, asking, “You go to the dentist, like I told you?”  
  
“What? You never told me to go to no dentist! What you going on about?”  
  
That wasn’t Rona scared or Rona sly: that was Rona reacting normally to a bizarre question. So likely it was OK--she wasn’t under duress.  
  
Rona was continuing, “Went up to that clinic, me and Ken, and they said--”  
  
“All right,” Spike interrupted, pacing, hand lifting to his forehead, trying hard to think it all out, if he should let them into the empty house. Sue didn’t have an invite, far as he knew; Huey surely didn’t. But Mike did, and it hadn’t been revoked. And he wasn’t altogether sure of Mike’s intentions anymore. Might use the others as a stalking horse, be waiting on the other side….  
  
Then he stopped thinking about it. There were just too many maybes for him to pursue them all. Made him feel everything was about to dissolve into impinging Cubist colored shapes and spaces devoid of meaning. “All right, go to the junction nearest Revello and Brown,” he directed. “Meet you there.”  
  
A wary dash from shade to shade took him to the sewer lid at the corner and so down. He lit a cigarette and paced, hearing their approach along the reverberant tube long before they took the final bend and came into sight, three abreast. Sue, of course; and Huey a step or two behind, and Mary, that he hadn’t expected, all of them in the colors; and behind them, the second rank was comprised of tall Rona, grim-faced Kennedy, and that little twerp Toby or Tony or whatever the idiot’s name was--the one Spike had lessoned about messing up on sentry duty.  
  
No sign or smell of Mike. So Spike guessed it was probably all right and no more than it seemed. Maybe.  
  
The closer they got, the slower they came, the SITs embarrassed and uneasy and the vamps politely looking at his chest, or aside, so as not to present a challenge. All except Sue. Heedless of manners or subtlety, she came on into touching distance, already talking, something about fledges. She went on sudden pause when Spike said neutrally past her, to Huey, “Come about the bounty, have you?”  
  
The lanky vamp’s long, creased face was blank enough for poker. “Nah, not worth it. Anyway, Digger’s adjusted that somewhat.”  
  
“Yeah? What’s it now?”  
  
“Two cents.”  
  
“That so.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Spike didn’t know what reaction Huey expected and found he didn’t care. Too much work, trying to puzzle out things like that. No immediate threat, so Huey no longer registered: Spike switched attention to Sue. She went off pause, running on from where she’d left off.  
  
With the SITs chiming in now and again, the gist seemed to be that they’d gotten a handle on the fledge factory. Came on a couple of vamps holding a human, a cow--multiple bite marks; weakened but not dead--in a corner of Elmhurst cemetery. Doing nothing. Just waiting. By a fresh grave. Waiting for a fledge to rise. The cow therefore brought to feed and thus subdue the ravenous fledge…and then be turned and buried for later collection, etcetera, repeat at will, and like that.  
  
They’d backed off and gotten into a whispered argument, Sue and the SITs, whether to dust the whole crew, minders and new-risen fledge, and rescue the cow, or to check back with Spike and let him call it. But they couldn’t get him on the phone.  
  
“Yeah,” Rona put in, “you’re real bad about that, Spike.”  
  
“Otherwise occupied,” Spike responded.  
  
“Yeah,” said Rona, much muted. “We heard about that too. Afterward.”  
  
Resuming her tale, Sue explained that by that time, the fledge had risen and the cow been consumed and interred, not just dumped, which had given them the assembly line concept of how the thing was run, all methodical and thrifty, not have to dig a new grave every time. They had the what but not the who, since Elmhurst was in District Seven, under a vamp named Winslow: not on Digger’s ground at all. And Kennedy had been determined to find out if Winslow had contrived this all on his own or at somebody else’s direction.  
  
So they’d followed long enough to see the fledge delivered to one of the entry-points to Digger’s warren.  
  
“So they’re for Digger,” Sue concluded. “But we still couldn’t get hold of you, and I wanted to take down the two resurrectionist vamps, torture them a little--you know, for information?--before we dusted them, but Ken said no, we should leave them alone, give no sign we’d caught on, and while we were arguing, we ran into Benny. Not Big Benny but Little Benny Blackhead from District Two by the water treatment plant, you know, who ate the twins last week? Anyway, word was out that Mike was on the move and not doing the sweep, everything open for the taking, and first we were scared that Mike had done you and we didn’t know what to do and Ken said I could lair up at their place, and then this morning Huey called so we knew about the factory, so we all got together to see what you wanted us to do, and here we are!”  
  
In her rattled exuberance, Sue reminded Spike for a moment of Harmony. But Sue was a much cooler, shrewder article than Harm had ever been. The two SITs bore her mark and subtly deferred to her--most noticeable in acerbic Kennedy: all quiet and watchful, not saying much, which mostly wasn't her way. Sue had come up in the world, from pure random fledge at everybody's mercy. Her holding to the mission despite Mike's breakaway, and her mostly benign assertiveness, showed she had no intention of losing what she'd gained.  
  
Huey commented to Spike, “If Winslow’s doing it, chances are good they all are.”  
  
“Yeah,” Spike agreed. And the fledges channeled to Digger, who had the experience and the space to supervise them. In under a month, a pocket army--stupid, reckless, and undisciplined but fierce and strong in their numbers, and Digger more than able to replace losses. Like the mass attack thrown at the theater.  
  
“And you’re telling me this why?” Spike inquired of Sue, letting the process of lighting a fresh cigarette show how bored he was with the whole topic.  
  
Sue and both SITs looked taken aback. Then Kennedy pointed out curtly, “You said to find out. We did.”  
  
“Full stop. Well, that’s just fine. Now you can go on about your business.”  
  
“What business?” Kennedy shot back. “What are you gonna do about it? About Mike? About the sweeps?”  
  
Spike stuffed hands in his pockets, turning away, singing softly, “ _‘For I’m to be Queen of the May, Mother, I’m to be Queen of the May!’_ ”  
  
Because there was damn-all he could do about it, and probably fuck that up too, and he didn’t care where the hell they went or what the hell they did, they couldn’t be on his side because he had no side to be on and he wanted very badly to kill something and present company wasn’t necessarily excluded, which would be such a disappointment to them, considering the high expectations he’d pretty much required that they have of him.  
  
Just too fucking much.  
  
Behind him, Sue sang out, “I’m not going back to Digger!”  
  
Didn’t trust Mike to favor and protect her there, with his own status so iffy and uncertain: quite plain. Sue was looking out for Sue, and the other vamps almost certainly the same. Looking for advantage, protection. Not a gnat’s worth of altruism or loyalty in the lot of them. Vamp normal. Right now, Spike despised vamps. Never wanted to see another one. Good thing vamps didn’t reflect in mirrors or Casa Summers would be awash in mirror shards.  
  
“ _‘For I’m to be Queen of the May, Mother, I’m to be Queen of the May!’_ ”  
  
But he still had the fucking meeting to set up, and he’d lost his go-between. Fist on his chest to contain the hurt, Spike halted at the ladder. Then he made himself turn back.  
  
Didn’t matter who he picked to set it up. Any one of ‘em would do.  
  
**********  
  
Dragging home from school, Dawn plunked down on the porch steps and dug her cell out of her backpack. Making a wincing face, she turned the cell on. It didn’t ring. She slumped and rubbed her eyes. When she’d waited several minutes, she sighed and punched in the number. She got the automated message that the other cell was either out of range or turned off.  
  
Praise Alexander Graham Bell, it seemed Mike had finally wound down enough to sleep.  
  
It had been a lot like incoherent early-morning Spike-O-Grams, only worse. Mike must have called her over twenty times, generally right in the middle of classes, some of the calls less than a minute apart as some new blurt occurred to him. She’d mostly mollified the teachers by claiming an ongoing family emergency and been allowed to leave class and sit outside the door to listen to the current rant. Most of the time, they were both crying, which was good: gave credibility to her excuse. When a teacher wouldn’t let her leave, required she turn the cell off, it would ring the second she hit the hall at class change and turned it on, and there would be Mike again, emoting all over her.  
  
That was how he was, how he did--she’d learned that, over the past months. All cool and impassive, distant in person and in a crisis. But afterward, he’d come unglued and demand to share that with her as long as it took for him to settle again. Maybe because he was an Aurelian, she thought--they were all a heaping mess of emotions. It just came out differently in each of them. Spike was most likely to erupt into violence; Mike dissolved into a puddle of self-pitying goo. Angel, she gathered, brooded.  
  
And Mike’s hurt was real: Dawn couldn’t distance herself from it. Appealed to, trusted, wanted so desperately, she couldn’t disbelieve or deny him, even when it was a nuisance.  
  
She’d thought at first that Mike had appointed her the custodian of his humanity--that that was the attraction, her appeal for him, other than the mark. But she’d come to suspect that the cool reserve _was_ his humanity: if she’d met him before he was turned, that was all she would have seen, all he’d have let her know about. Maybe all he’d have known about himself. He’d been a mercenary, after all. She now thought it was being turned that had loosed all that in him, inhibitions destroyed; and for any vamp to admit such vulnerability to another was pretty much suicidal. Absolutely Not Done. After events brought them together, he’d turned to her in grief or confusion and found himself not rejected or ridiculed. Now he trusted her to extend her sympathy anytime he needed it--pretty much blind to her circumstances or how it affected her, with a pretty typical vamp blindness. But he made up for it with kindness and steadfastness the rest of the time, so she didn’t grudge him his blowouts, any more than Buffy grudged Spike the occasional mayhem committed on furniture when things got to be too much and he exploded. Vamps were not real big on repression, and in opening up to a human, no face was lost. It was safe.  
  
In a lot of ways, it was true: Mike was six. Not a fledge anymore, a Master, even, but coming into what probably would continue to be a stormy adolescence, in vampire terms.  
  
Being a teenager herself, Dawn could generally imagine his side of things, even given the warp of vampire nature. She felt for him. She couldn’t have shut him out even if she’d wanted to. When the calls came, she answered. And listened. And cried.  
  
He was relieved, and miserable, about finally resolving the unbearable tension between him and Spike. Usually so politely spoken, he was profanely furious at Spike for even considering using her that way, putting her into obvious jeopardy, and furious at her for being fool enough to go along with it. He knew she, Spike, and Buffy were very angry with him for putting Spike down and thus ending the alliance but as he’d told her repeatedly (and tearfully), there was no other way to play it. Couldn’t go along with risking her, couldn’t stand still for a thing like that. So he’d done what was necessary. But he hated being back under Digger’s thumb. Being, at base, a gentleman, Mike didn't offer details, which only prompted Dawn to imagine the worst of Spike's non-PC tales of the bad old days and the unsavory range of vamp domination games.  
  
The bottom line was that Mike had consigned himself to a circle of vamp hell to prevent her having to go there. Dawn found it extremely hard to be angry with him under those circumstances.  
  
He had to be rescued. And Dawn had not the least idea how that could be accomplished. Have to have Spike help her figure that out.  
  
Putting the phone away and heaving a great sigh, Dawn went inside and heard voices in the front room. Giles and Willow were talking, serious and animated, Giles on the couch and Willow cross-legged on the floor, open books and sheaves of notes strewn around them. Spike was sitting in but mostly silent in the big chair in the back corner, with the slightly glazed stare that meant he’d been doing pills to stay awake through the day, mechanically rubbing the place on his chest where Mike’s taser had hit him.  
  
As Dawn crossed the room, she realized they were discussing preparations for a meeting with Digger. Which was obviously still on. Which meant she was gonna have to go after all.  
  
Feeling everything in her sink and go cold, Dawn turned on her heel, fled up to her room, and slammed her door behind her. As usual, she didn’t think anybody noticed.  
  
**********  
  
The notice Anya had put up for the class’s new venue had named the inconvenient hour of six-thirty--right in the middle of what generally was the supper hour at Casa Summers, though conveniently right after closing, if you were Anya. Which very few people were, Buffy thought sourly, changing into exercise gear in her bedroom. She’d picked up an electric green unitard and thought she looked pretty pert and bouncy in it because it showed absolutely every smooth curve and Spike was gonna trip over his tongue when he saw it. And she’d done her hair up in a sort of pony-tail fountain secured by so many pink and orange scrunchies it couldn’t possibly fall out, she’d probably have to cut the scrunchies off afterward, which would result in a sexy cascade so that was all right too.  
  
She might have been fired but she wasn’t gonna be shabby, picking up with the class where she’d left off, sort of, because an open vampire attack, a couple of deaths, Spike in vampface, and some grievous bodily harm had intervened and that might produce awkwardness. Maybe nobody would be there, paying for what they’d once had for free. Maybe there’d be scads, all curious and wanting the answers Spike had vaguely promised them.  
  
Either way, it was obviously Spike’s job to sort and therefore nothing Buffy had to worry about.  
  
At the head of the stairs, Buffy called at Dawn’s shut door, “Supper’s gonna be a little late, so don’t stuff yourself on junk.” Though she got no reply she figured Dawn was in there--the radio or CD player was warbling rhythmic female angst--so she added, “You can get your homework done in the meantime.”  
  
On that virtuous thought, Buffy bounced down the stairs and stopped by the hall table to collect her bag, car keys, and wallet.  
  
Willow and Giles appeared to have finished their conference because they were gathering up the piles of notes and stacking the books.  
  
“Are we all set for tomorrow, then?” Buffy asked.  
  
Seeing her outfit, Giles raised a Spocklike eyebrow, saying, “I believe we’re as prepared as we can be,” and Willow went all frowny and worried-looking as though she thought that wasn’t nearly prepared enough.  
  
“Stay if you want,” Buffy told Giles. “Supper’s after the class, and I’m thinking we’ll bring back pizza.”  
  
“No anchovies,” Willow said at once.  
  
“Will, when was the last time I got anchovies?”  
  
“When Spike answered the door in game-face, practically gave the delivery boy a coronary, and we got the wrong order.”  
  
Buffy shrugged. She’d forgotten about that. “OK, no anchovies. Giles?”  
  
“I think I’ll forego the pleasure,” Giles replied absently, sliding a stack of books under an arm. “I have some calls to make and a bit more research to do. Willow--”  
  
As Giles proceeded to make reassuring noises at Willow, Buffy switched her attention to the chair by the weapons chest. Spike was sprawled out nearly full length, as though propped on an invisible diagonal plank: legs straight and ankles crossed, arms folded protectively over his chest, and head thrown back--not noticing her or anything. Plainly out of gas, stalled, and inert. Dropping onto one knee by the chair, Buffy poked and joggled him until he opened a dim eye.  
  
“Saddle up, Tonto.” She jabbed knuckles into his shoulder lightly as she rose. “Class.”  
  
“Oh. Yeah.”  
  
Leading the way to the front door, Buffy prodded, “Like the outfit?”  
  
“Look fine, pet,” Spike responded obediently, patting his pockets.  
  
Disappointed, Buffy commented, “A new start. So I thought--”  
  
Willow interrupted brightly, “Mistrust any enterprise that requires new clothes,” looking mysteriously pleased with herself until Buffy shot her a blank look. “Henry David Thoreau,” Willow explained.  
  
As Buffy grumped, “That’s a downer, Will,” Spike muttered something that sounded like, “ _Distrust._ ” Looking around at him, Buffy asked, “What?”  
  
“Nothing. Got no fags. Have to stop, get some.”  
  
After a quick glance at Spike, Giles got a pursed, quizzical expression, inquiring, “Prepared for another siege in the Venusburg?”  
  
Flicking a return glance, Spike twitched a scowl. “Shut up. Dunno what the hell you’re talking about. Let’s get going here.” Passing Buffy, he snatched open the front door and banged out onto the porch.  
  
After trading perplexed looks with Willow and Giles, Buffy strode after him, collecting a white fiber-fill vest from a hall peg. Fastening the vest snaps and stepping off the porch, she turned right, toward the graveled parking area, before realizing Spike was headed straight, toward the twilight street and his bike. Not an absolute parting of the ways, but a definite divergence. “Spike? SUV.” She pointed.  
  
Spike broke pace as though he’d stumbled over something, wheeling half around. He hesitated, then shook his head and kept going, saying something unintelligible about fags and fucking opera.  
  
He clearly figured to take his bike and expected her to climb on behind, to zip off with all kinds of style. She’d planned to take the SUV because the stack of tumbling pads was in it.  
  
There was a moment’s stalemate until she offered to stop at a convenience store. Spike capitulated, dumping himself sulkily into the passenger side as Buffy started up.  
  
“Xander helped disassemble stuff,” she explained, backing into the street, then looking both ways. “The big stuff that could be salvaged is in his truck. I played lookout and bodyguard, and I took the pads…. The place is really trashed, Spike. Most of the windows have broken panes, and there’s lots of water in the back. A cracked pipe, Xander thought. The office has been pulled apart--like somebody played ‘She loves me, she loves me not’ with the wall panels.” She glanced to see how bad he minded. He was staring straight ahead, drumming fingers on his knee. “On the up side,” she offered, “it’s all bright and airy now.”  
  
“Yeah,” Spike responded unhelpfully--obviously stewing about something completely else.  
  
Buffy was used to his moods and his irritability, his fidgets and sudden explosions. They didn’t bother her particularly. But she didn’t like the sense that he was a thousand miles away inside his own head, thinking things he’d given her no clue about. Distant. Shutting her out.  
  
She asked, “He still playing with the Stone? Rayne?”  
  
His head jerked, startled, and he noticed her. “Something like. But no. No fun playing with himself when most vamps are still asleep, hardly notice. Just demons, and hardly worth it, just for that. Expect it will start up presently. No. Not that. Only the usual.”  
  
“And what’s the usual?”  
  
Spike was silent a minute. “Expect he didn’t fight much, letting me loose, ‘cause he wasn’t ready yet anyhow. Time wasn’t right, and he hadn’t practiced…controlling things. Time’s coming up now. So he’s…leaning on me a bit more. In my head. Sort of. There,” he said, pointing at the garishly lit convenience store. “Pull over.”  
  
By the time he’d gone inside and returned, opening a pack of cigarettes and lighting up, his mood had changed: he was looking around, assessing the dusk more alertly and with less strained gloom.  
  
As he settled back beside her and yanked the door shut, Buffy asked, “Why’s this meeting with Digger so important?” as she reversed and pulled out of the parking lot.  
  
“Always got to keep good track of the opposition.”  
  
“Specifically, Spike,” Buffy pursued patiently. “Worth risking Dawn for.”  
  
“No risk. Or not much. Michael, he’s there now: he’ll look after her, what time she’s there.”  
  
Buffy ran a yellow light, then jammed on the brakes. Fortunately, not much traffic was moving, and the truck behind her was some distance back and had good brakes. Also a horn, that she ignored. “You set that up!” she accused. “Last night!”  
  
“Never 100% certain how people are gonna jump, pet,” Spike responded, which sounded like a denial but really wasn’t, she thought. “But I expect he’ll be more use to me in Digger’s hole, for a bit, than up to the factory. His call. But Michael, he’s a pretty predictable lad. Doesn’t surprise me too often. So I figured, yeah, that’s a likely way it could go. Cost the computer set-up an’ a few of the crew, but may be worth it. Have to see.” His hand, holding the cigarette, briefly fisted against his chest, then moved back to the open window.  
  
The truck pulled past with shouting. Buffy eased the SUV over to an open stretch of curb. Shoving the shift into PARK, Buffy stated belligerently, “Spike, I’m not stupid.”  
  
He quirked a smile. “You’re like me, sweet: brain’s not your best part, and you think with your fists.”  
  
Buffy shook her head hard. “Not that. You think you can get away with things because I don’t know enough to ask, or what to ask. Because I don’t know what the fricking Venusburg is, or whatever it was that Giles was being ultra-subtle about. But I see you, all closed up in dreams of burning, and I know it isn’t right. I’m part of this, and it’s Dawn, and it’s you, and I want to know what’s coming, that you see and I don’t.”  
  
“Gonna be late for the class, pet,” he evaded calmly.  
  
Fuming, Buffy shoved the vehicle into D and pulled out, belatedly checking the mirror. She didn’t like it that he looked so drawn and exhausted and she couldn’t tell if it was the toll of past trials or in expectation of what was coming. She didn’t like his being there but unreachable, opaque, closed to her. She didn’t like it that he’d collected only a single pack of cigarettes, not a carton.  
  
After the class, they were gonna have a major talk.  
  
She was not gonna let herself get shut out!  
  
**********  
  
By planning ahead, Buffy bounced out and beat Spike to the hatch. She put her back against it, smiling wide with extra perkiness. “No, you go ahead, I’ve got this.”  
  
“Pet, I can--”  
  
“No, you just go ahead. Take attendance or something. I’ll be right there. Really!” She kept her rear pressed against the hatch lock until Spike turned uncertainly and wandered off toward the floodlit façade of the Sunnydale Community Center.  
  
No way was she gonna go in there first, face all those…faces. Assuming there were faces…. Anyway, it was clearly Spike’s job to brave the unknown and get everything all squared away before she got there. What he was doing now, right? Advance guard against the universe. She got to lag behind, do the baggage, for a change.  
  
The pads didn’t weigh much, but they were stiff and bulky, nearly as large as mattresses: she couldn’t fit more than one, folded, under her arm, and it kept trying to unfold, like an ineptly made one-slice sandwich. However, the pads had neat little straps on the sides, she discovered, and she could grab the straps of four together with the pads sort of concertina’d under her elbows, and carry eight, both hands, that way.  
  
Having locked up the SUV with the remote thingy, she got the eight pads to the wide front step, laid them aside to open the door, then pitched them inside in bunches. Somehow, inside, they seemed fatter: she could manage four straps in her right hand but only three in her left. Shrugging, she punted the lone pad skidding ahead of her down a long, lighted hall with doors at intervals on both sides. By each door, a glassed frame contained a curly computer-lettered ad for the evening's scheduled activities. Advanced Macramé was in progress, 6:00-7:00. Beginning Beadwork was empty, didn't start until 7. Nearly at the end of the hall, the ad frame of the door to the left read "Safety Through Fitness, 6:30-7:30." She pushed the door in just enough to confirm yup, this had to be it, Spike’s voice and quite a lot of intent young faces, everybody seated on the shiny wooden floor. She leaned the pads haphazardly against the wall and started repeating the process of put-and-take to get them inside.  
  
As she pushed and wrestled the first few in, Andy hustled up to take over the job, which freed her to stand inside and look things over.  
  
Even allowing for no bleachers, the room was much smaller than the gym--about 20 x 40, as a guess. The long back wall to her left was mirrored, maybe for dance or aerobic classes, and she was a bit startled to realize the dark wall to her right was all windows--so people passing outside could see all the fun things happening inside, obviously. The walls were rough-pitted cinderblock. A wide strip was painted red above the windows and mirrors, all the way around; a narrower strip of cobalt blue ran below. Except for the boundary strips, the scant remainder was white. The room was as brilliantly lit as the inside of a running microwave.  
  
Spike was sitting crosslegged with his back to the windows; the class of about twenty-some were spread around in small clusters, facing him. Buffy found the faces vaguely familiar. Not really listening, she gathered Spike was trying to give a reason there wasn’t gonna be any more of the smell, saying the first field trial was over and the results were being evaluated and similar nonsense he didn’t seem very interested in or confident about himself. Meanwhile a notebook, likely a sign-in sheet, was circulating from one group to another with nudges and reaches.  
  
“--so don’t nobody depend on it,” Spike was advising, shoving a hand through his hair so it stood up in crooked tufts. “You take all care, bein’ out after dark. ‘Cause there’s nasties out there, some of you know that now, an’ they’re not gonna be put off by how you smell. You--”  
  
Somebody raised an arm high. When Spike rambled on without noticing, the girl stood up, demanding, “What _was_ that, at the theater? You said you’d explain!”  
  
Spike shifted uncomfortably, reaching for a pocket and making himself stop. “So I did, Laura. You all look there--in the mirror.” As they turned and looked, then turned back, having seen nothing but themselves, Spike waved them around again. “Keep looking. Don’t quit till you’ve seen what you’re missing.”  
  
It took a full minute before the first one noticed, nudged someone sitting close, and then a tidal stir in the whole room. And when they swiveled back around, variously frowning and puzzled, to report their uncanny realization, there was Spike in game-face.  
  
“Yeah,” he said, lighting a cigarette, golden eyes frowned half-shut against the smoke. “I’m one of ‘em. That some of you didn’t quite see plain, there in the theater with the film still running and all. That ate George and hurt more than a few of you, some still in hospital but most not, I’m glad to see. So there it is, what nobody wants to see or admit, what’s invisible-like in the mirrors of your daylight world. But we’re there, and sometimes we come in amongst you, mostly in the dark. Look again: there’s more than me you ain’t seeing. Two of you see each other, you move aside. You don’t see your neighbor, you find somebody you do see, and confirm it, then you both move aside. Sheep and goats here.”  
  
As Spike smoked, waited, and looked on, the class nervously sorted itself in a series of doubtful discoveries, herding in pairs to Spike’s right as he’d gestured them to do. Four at the back remained--plainly there, but empty space in the mirrors, as Spike was. Sue, Buffy recognized. The other female vamp had been to one of the classes--Bea, Buffy thought her name was. Digger’s. Then there was a crease-faced, rail thin male vamp Buffy recalled having seen at the factory. He and Sue were wearing the colors. The last male vamp, in jeans and a blue T-shirt, was sitting on his heels with his head bent, fiddling with something. When he lifted his face, all bland and self-contained, it was Mike and what he was playing with was a stake, rolling it between his palms. Probably still had his taser, too.  
  
Buffy jerked forward but halted just as fast when Spike commented, “S’all right, pet. He’s our designated spy for tonight, just wants to look on to what we do here, then report back. He’s paid up, he’s entitled to be here. Might be up for a bit of a demonstration later. We’ll see if he wants the fun and games or has something else in mind….” Regarding the class, Spike went on, “So you see, what you see isn’t necessarily what you see. Or isn’t all there is to see. Sue, you can settle, we’re all friends here now.”  
  
With a grimace of relief, Sue let her features flow into the vampire mask, producing a strangled, girly shriek from the huddle on the right. The grim-looking skinny vamp, Bea, and Mike stayed in human face.  
  
The point was made: the monsters could look just like anybody, and did, most of the time.  
  
Buffy noticed a number of people doubtfully checking her out in the mirror. The attention made her feel itchy.  
  
“Last I knew or counted,” Spike continued, “there were twenty-six kinds of demon living in Sunnydale and I dunno how many other kinds passing through. Lump in the ghouls, shape-changers, marrow-suckers, and other miscellaneous in there too. Most make at least small mischief.” He gave them the unnerving experience of a full, fanged vampire grin. That slowly faded and he just stared at them until they started to twitch and shift uneasily. “Most do more. And then there’s vamps: like me and that lot there. For which the humans roundabout are the blue-plate special and the dish du jour. ‘Cousins,’ we call each other. You, we call ‘food.’ You’re in a war zone, children, and you never even knew it, though maybe some suspected something was off. And what you saw in the theater, that was just one of the skirmishes--not even about you. Vamps, we’re bad news no matter how you meet us. Coming or going. And going, that’s where your teacher, Miss Elizabeth, comes in.” He swung around to look at her, his face relaxing into human as he turned, and everybody looking at her, and Buffy understood he really, really wanted to hand it off to her now. Wanted to quit being the chief exhibit of the freaky, scary monster and fade into the unremarkable background.  
  
“You’re doing just fine,” Buffy assured him.  
  
“Pet, I could get things set up--”  
  
“No, you do this kind of thing so much better than I do,” Buffy responded desperately.  
  
“But you had that notion…about an escort service an’ all? Time to tell ‘em why you began this.”  
  
“Spike, it’s not time,” Buffy protested. “Exercises--” She did a half-hearted jumping jack that sagged and stopped.  
  
“Love, it’s what they’re here for, to know the why of it. An’ that’s you. I’ll just--” He waved the cigarette, using that as an excuse to unfold and back a couple of steps toward the door, almost tripping over the stack of pads. Then he turned and escaped, leaving Buffy in the mirrored work-out room with about twenty frightened kids and four vampires.  
  
Deserter. Coward. He _knew_ how much she hated standing up in public, in front of strangers! She was so gonna get him for this!  
  
Buffy shifted and took a stance in her beetle-green unitard. Lead foot for direction and rear foot tensed and solid for balance and pushing off, hips slightly turned to keep the knees nice and springy and support a shoulder-thrust, everything ready and poised. Facing the class but keeping the vamps in view as well, knowing that they couldn’t reach her in a single leap and that she could therefore take down at least two immediately and buy time to improvise a weapon to deal with the others, assuming all four came at her at once. Unless Mike used the taser…. Mike met her eyes with his usual placid expression, showing nothing of his intentions. Buffy glared, hoping that would be enough to hold him in place.  
  
Head high, she said, “I’m Buffy,” and swallowed hard around the boulder in her throat. “The Vampire Slayer.”  
  
**********  
  
Looking in through the long window at Buffy lecturing a new set of potentials--potential _whats_ still to be determined--Spike paced and smoked and tried his hardest not to be nuts.  
  
He couldn’t afford it. Wasn’t time yet.  
  
He understood now. When the foreground blurred and shimmered and all the meaning dropped out and everything disconnected, the relationship of the overlooked background skeins shone with occult, sidewise significance. That was when sometimes, you could _see:_ discern the patterns that underlaid the obvious or the _now_ piece of them anyway and the stretch back to where they’d come from and where maybe they’d tangle and cross further on, in what had not yet come to be.  
  
His best explanation to himself was that he’d finally come into his full inheritance from Dru, bless her, that he’d missed when with her, having to be all sane and present and reasonable to take care of her all those years. Only being forcibly and unwillingly cast loose of sanity had made him begin to _see_ \--the dreams, first, and now the not-quite-connections and patterns hidden behind and within the everyday.  
  
Hadn’t wanted it and didn’t like it, but he’d use it if he could. But it wasn’t time yet to put himself at the mercy of the pattern, throw himself helplessly into the weft of what was coming, that he could feel and see but not articulate, any more than Dru ever could: babbling prescient nonsense, naming all the stars the same. Any more than he could have described the potential coming-together click and impact of seeing and executing a complex collision on a pool table, sink the six ball in the corner pocket and move the rest into a useful configuration for the next shot. It just _was_ , and you _saw_ it, and you _did_ it, and it _became_. Natural-like.  
  
Nuts, but natural-like, all the same.  
  
He was still hanging on. He saw the normal, sane things and could put names to them, mostly. Grass, not the normal kind in the lush childhood parks of home he hadn’t realized he even remembered but minute thickets of the mutant stuff they planted here because it was drought-resistant and needed less mowing. Bermuda, was it? Zoysia?  
  
Trees roundabout, a few November, needle-dropping sparse California pines and stinky ginkgoes along the street and those damn mutant Bradford pears that fruited little hard pellets but no matter since the birds still liked them, not to mention the vertical pineapples that were palms, no branches or shade to speak of but native here and not difficult to climb.  
  
No elms anymore, though. Pity about that.  
  
And cement and cinderblock and vast swaths of glass, unthinkable in his youth, the cramped, enclosed panes of the Crystal Palace (that his mum had taken him to, a babe in arms, after it was moved to Sydenham and formally reopened there by Queen Victoria herself) notwithstanding, and plasterboard--drywall, they called it--and he was not being nuts, he was just naming things, insects swarming the street lights and peeping nighthawks swooping the crossways, hunting them, and they all had names and discrete identities and he knew that, really knew that if he concentrated and stayed the hell out of the dreams that tried to flow into everything like a slow wash of syrup, all golden and sticky, and he didn’t like that at all because that was the beginning of the burning, that happened when he was all caught up in the pattern, locked into it and all burning and it was terrible and frightened him worse than almost anything.  
  
But that wasn’t bonkers, it was just sensible to avoid that as long as he could. Until it would mean something and maybe what it should, that he could feel tingling off in the not-yet.  
  
Reminded, he got the pill vial out of his pocket and dry swallowed two. Should have thought of it before, but he’d been out of cigarettes and then the Slayer wanting to go a different way than he’d seen and that’d distracted him. Do it now, anyway, and presently he’d have the good of it, the stoned clarity that was nothing at all like sleep.  
  
A nice-smelling girl with tight, bright purple skin swooped past on a bicycle, up to the bike rack on the fan-shaped cement apron by the front door. Dismounting, the girl hastily pushed the front wheel of her bike between the vertical rails, then mistrustfully threaded a cable through and locked it. And of course her skin wasn’t purple, that was her costume, that showed her tits completely and most of the rest of what she had. Her skin was just skin-colored, except for the sodium lights that tinted everything with yellow.  
  
“Is it over?” she called to him worriedly. “Did I miss it? My stupid brother was late and mom wouldn’t dish up supper and then I couldn’t find my shoe--”  
  
Candy, her name was. He knew that. A few yards away, she reeked of the smell, that’d been just wishful thinking on his part. A community that wasn’t wholly vamp or wholly human but something between, mediated by imposed, magically enhanced significance. Lilies--a smell of formality and funerals. Enough, almost, to mute the smell of live blood, that was their true connection. No use, anymore, pretending otherwise.  
  
But he was fine. Had Slayer blood still whirling in him. He’d be fine for awhile longer. Didn’t really want to eat her much. Could still choose and be social to her.  
  
He waved at the long brilliant window. “Still goin’ on, you ain’t missed it all.”  
  
“Is there something bad out here?” Candy demanded anxiously. “That you’re here, not there, and all nearly-wingy--?” She flung her arms wide, demonstrating something or other, the girl was definitely odd and it wouldn’t be civil to take too much notice of such.  
  
“Only me. You get on inside.”  
  
“Aren’t you coming?”  
  
Spike demonstrated the coal of the cigarette, and she seemed to understand that, whirling and racing inside to sprint to the light. After a minute, he saw her enter the workout room, all apologies and gestures and bouncing on her toes like Bit did sometimes.  
  
But Bit would be all right, he was reasonably sure of that, with Mike in place now even smelling like he did and both of them, Digger and Mike, making sure Spike knew it, too: little enclosed space like that, no way not to know it, but Mike was a vamp, tough and thick-skinned when it came to such things, he’d be all right and would keep it from Bit, him instead of her, and Mike would be content with that once he understood, Spike was certain. Or nearly certain. Anyway it’d been Mike’s call and he’d just have to endure it now, wouldn’t he? He’d be all right. Eventually. Probably. Unless Spike had to put him down first, a really bad prospect but one way it could go, once the syrup settled in, locking them all in sickly-sweet amber. Of course, Mike might do him, instead, after Bit showed up: that was another likely scenario, not much to choose between them. Still too far off to make that call.  
  
Spike pressed a fist to his chest, where the hurt was.  
  
Inside, behind the window, like one of the new barless zoos, the children were actually doing exercises now. Warming up. Might get a few throws in before the time ran out that they were scheduled for and had paid for. Tidy sum, actually. Almost enough for a new computer away afterward, that he couldn’t see yet, past the burning. No point making any long-term commitments until that was past. Had the current batch of translation (another stupid spell) done and sent in good order, and that would see Casa Summers through the next month right there. Everything had been parked safe in the virtual place that was his own corner of the Watchers’ invisible and intangible online library, so nothing vital had been lost with the factory computer. Except nearly all his bookmarks, and he could reconstruct them, given time.  
  
Mike was by the window now, looking out at him with his usual no-expression that Spike currently interpreted as baleful, a straight-on stare. Not an “I’m so pissed I can’t wait to dust you” stare, which would have been a problem; more a sulky resentful “Look what you made me do, you rotten bastard!” stare, and he could deal with that.  
  
But not with the smell, that had his demon all alert and wanting more of it, wanting to roll around in it like a dog in carrion. Bait, likely. An undertow of temptation. Spike didn’t have a lot of practice resisting temptation and wasn’t sure the soul was a strong enough mooring to keep him from it if he didn’t put distance and a few walls between.  
  
Vamps were immune to physical addiction. If you didn’t dust, all damage regenerated. The same dose was always the same, always enough, which was lucky, considering nearly all vamps had a taste for one thing or another and figured too much of a good thing was just fine. Was that way himself and had never had reason to think otherwise. But something in your head, that was different and hard to ignore. And in the back of his head, always, there was the niggling itch of his connection to Rayne and all that went with that and how wretchedly good it had felt and still felt and would feel again, the minute he turned loose and let it take him. Not a voice or even a pressure, just the awareness that he didn’t have to feel so awful, be so exhausted just holding himself in place, be anything beyond the demon and what it wanted. Didn’t have to keep trying so hard to be sane and responsible, bring all the names to mind, be the unfitting one in a human world that made less and less sense to him the longer he tried to live in it except for Buffy, of course. And Bit. And sometimes Red or the Watcher, they had their moments of stark clarity to him, bronze and goddam fucking Venusburg, throwing into myth things he felt but didn’t think about.  
  
Dru, she’d adored opera, loved the glitter and extravagant emotion of the singing and the music, brass railings and plush seats and private boxes whose beautifully gowned and fancy-dressed occupants you could eat, all unnoticed, during the performance and prop just so, to have the best view of all the portrayed passion howling its collective wigged head off from the stage, so of course he’d had to take her, four continents. Naturally, she specially liked Wagner, they’d done the whole overwrought Ring cycle in Bayreuth in the twenties, the whole _Willkommen bei den Bayreuther Festspielen:_ just moved from box to box and champagne and chocolates in the intervals, living in it and on it like honey, one of those full-immersion type things that seemed as though they could go on forever while they lasted. Damn near fucking _was_ forever, more than a week of it, Woodstock for the _lumpenproletariat_ and postwar half-starved hausfraus with their mended white silk gloves and the fine _Damen_ with their long white arms, the taste of their blood had really been entirely something else.  
  
Buffy had never shown any interest in such. Shuddering, pitching the last of the cigarette, Spike hoped she never did. Altogether too much like being crazy and he had quite enough of that already, thanks ever so.  
  
Angelus, he’d liked opera, too. Might still do, for all Spike knew.  
  
Knew nothing and cared less.  
  
Deciding, he returned to the van, leaning against a nearby bad-smelling tree (ginkgo, most like) because the van alarm would yelp violation if he rested against the side of the van and he really didn’t need that now. She’d get him for it, Buffy would, for abandoning the class, making her tote all the pads back when it was over. But he wasn’t going back in there, with the sexual undertow of the smell and all the hopeful faces expecting him to do something and the glowering face insisting he already had.  
  
They didn’t understand. Best that way, likely. Best, anyway, that he could contrive.  
  
Feeling the pills kick in, all the lights gone glittering and stark, Spike lit another cigarette of his dwindling supply and settled himself to wait.


	19. Alice Down the Rabbit Hole

Having re-warded the house and everything appertaining thereto, making it a hermetic bubble not quite synched anymore to the outer world, which left her sweating and wrung out, Willow joined the others in the swap party at the end of the tunnel and they all went through. Xander, who’d begged off work to come along, handed her a lantern. They went last, to not interfere with Spike’s dark-sight, Xander with the stake bag over his shoulder and a medium axe in his hands, the kind that could be swung in tight spaces without slicing up your companions.  
  
When Willow stumbled wearily, Xander’s hand was there, catching her up by an elbow, squeezing her arm reassuringly before letting go. Then Giles dropped back, offering a hand without comment, with different meaning. Willow gratefully clasped it and sucked up a draft of raw power, energy taken from many sources and stored the night before.  
  
A slight bit squicky, using Giles that way, but he was so gravely calm about it all that Willow tried to be matter-of-fact about the implicit ick of it, the way Buffy was about Spike living off her, pretty much, nothing anymore in the refrigerator so you had to figure. They didn’t talk about it, just how it was, so Willow tried to be similarly offhanded about making herself a sort of life-energy vampire.  
  
But after that first pull, she disengaged, smiling weakly and waving fingers in thanks. Giles’ power was for containing Rayne, helping her bind the mage, and she didn’t dare draw too much lest it not be there when she most needed it. Because she’d be pretty much alone in that. Anya had supplied a bushel of crystals, herbs, magical implements and artifacts (on loan, payable only if they were broken or used up, which was pretty generous because, well, Anya) but wasn’t coming within a mile of the house today because, well, Anya. Willow would have to do this pretty much on her own. She’d studied all night, learning the spells designed to cage Chaos within Order, if only for a time.  
  
She wished she had a nice, hot espresso. Several. Triple sugar. That gave her a thought and she hustled a little faster, passing Giles, Dawn, and Buffy, to fall into step with Spike, in the lead. “You have any of those pills on you? The waker-uppers?”  
  
She knew he did: she could see the effect in the unnatural alertness and the pause it took him to process anything said to him. Like Casa Summers, he wasn’t quite synched to the normal anymore.  
  
He gave her a narrow, dubious look. “You’ll pay for it, later on.”  
  
“I know. But that’s later. Give.” She held out her hand and waited out the pause while he thought about it and decided, producing and uncapping the vial, tipping one of two remaining pills into her palm. She bit her lip. “You’re almost out.”  
  
“Doesn’t matter,” he responded, putting the vial away. “Use what you got while you got it.”  
  
Buffy was watching and overhearing but making no comments about not needing two pill freaks in the party, Buffy knew about accommodation and necessity, so Willow swallowed her uncertainty and guilt and the pill, swallowing hard until everything went down. She meekly stood aside to let everybody pass her, rejoining Xander at the rear.  
  
Xander was telling Dawn, “What is it--about an hour or so? Not counting the going and coming, of course. Piece of cake. What can go wrong in an hour? Wait, don’t answer that.”  
  
Dawn didn’t even smile, strolling along in pink corduroy overalls and a plain white long-sleeved mock-turtleneck with a droopy white sweater on top, her hands stuffed deep in the pockets.  
  
“Just trying to cheer you up a little,” Xander offered, starting to chuck her under the chin, but she winced her head away.  
  
“It’s OK, I’m good with it,” Dawn commented, pulling a fist from a pocket to rub at her eyes. “Notice the not-screaming-and-complaining of me. It’s only a swap to secure the meeting. Just like last time, right? Except without the kidnapping part, and we get a good swap in exchange, not Digger’s skanky ho. So all plus and with-it-ness here, no problemo.”  
  
She lied like a rug, she was scared to death, but it wouldn’t do any good to say so, so Willow kept shut, just admiring Dawn’s shaky courage.  
  
“Might even be candy again,” Dawn added, pulling a smile out of someplace it’d been stuffed down tight, folded, and full of wrinkles. It wobbled, but she wore it. “Double points for candy, since it’s a proven fact that chocolate solves everything.”  
  
Willow noticed Dawn was wearing a double necklace: the shield against mental influence/intrusion, in its locket, and the pierced fang on a thin cord--the keepsake of her defeat of the dragonlike taskin, something Willow thought she was secretly proud of; but since the Road Trip from Hell, Willow had never known her to wear it. All her defenses, magical and otherwise, conspicuously in place.  
  
Willow asked, “Do you have your taser?”  
  
Dawn shook her head, smooth hair flying. “They’d only take it. Can’t expect even a vamp to be that stupid about the same thing twice.” She shrugged. “It will be all right. Nobody’s gonna hurt me. I’m only of use _virgo intacta_ and all that.” Another shrug. “And like Xander says, it’s only for an hour or so. What could go wrong?”  
  
Willow hastily made a sign against ill-omen, that was supposedly also good against the Evil Eye, but the whole thing was superstitious nonsense, not a proper ward at all. Still, it made her feel better.  
  
She didn’t like the bit about _virgo intacta_ , since that only applied to the conditions of blood magic and maybe Dawn’s Keyness, since bloodletting had been involved in that, too. Both highly dangerous and waaay from the Dark Side of the magickal spectrum, too risky even to know much about, let alone use. But Rayne wasn’t gonna be there, he’d be under ward at Casa Summers as a counter-hostage, so maybe it was nothing.  
  
With Giles’ help and the Council’s resources, she’d considered and consolidated every recorded way of locking down a mage and disabling his powers. She just had to trust in that. As Dawn did. Surely Buffy and Spike wouldn’t have agreed to the exchange unless they were sure it would work, right?  
  
Ahead, Spike had stopped short of the junction of a cross pipe, so everybody stopped behind him, fanning out a little into fighting formation, just like on patrol except with Dawn protected in the middle. Willow understood: you took your stance at a defensible position, where nothing could come at you from the sides, and having secured your retreat. That was Xander’s job, mostly, and he stayed a few paces back, attending to the pipe they’d come through.  
  
“There’s a ladder and a cover,” Spike said, lighting a cigarette, then crumpling and pitching the pack, “about halfway back to the last junction. Everybody notice it?”  
  
“Yeah,” said Buffy, for all of them, though the fact was that Willow hadn’t noticed.  
  
In a rush, she felt the pill take effect: better than a double espresso, tingling with wide-eyed alertness. She recalled it was roughly three o’clock on a sunny afternoon, and with Spike gone on ahead to the meeting, all they had to do--  
  
“All you have to do is get topside,” Spike was continuing, “if this goes sidewise, an’ then run like hell. No vamp’s gonna follow you. But I dunno that vamps is all Digger’s got to call….” Voice trailing off, he looked away, up the pipe, head lifting. Glancing back, he’d gone to game-face, stark and bronze-eyed. “Showtime.”  
  
**********  
  
Ethan Rayne strolled clear of his vamp escort as though he hadn’t a care in the world. He paused by Spike to whisper something Spike recoiled from: snarling, indignant. The mage laughed, patting Spike companionably on the shoulder (another flinch) before coming on and linking an arm through Giles’ and starting to turn with him before Giles stiffly removed the too-familiar appendage like an offending dead fish somebody had draped on him. They squared off a moment, heads cocked alike but Rayne’s face open and pleased and Giles’ shut and forbidding. Giles held out a hand stiffly to Willow, and she took it, weaving the power to lock temporary wards that weren’t absolute since they had to move Rayne back to Casa Summers and weren’t about to carry him unless they had to. But the wards prevented movement in time and dimension except for a limited oval she’d extend as needed to get where they were going. Once inside the heavily warded house, she could be more specific and absolute in her controls.  
  
Spike had already moved off, out of sight; Buffy hugged her sister close, refusing to surrender her until Willow declared the counter-hostage secured.  
  
Having prevented him from moving except within a restricted range, Willow proceeded to cut Rayne’s connections to the ambient magic he might otherwise have drawn upon, undistracted by his claim, “Ooh, that tickles,” or Giles’ demanding the mage turn out his pockets. Willow found surprisingly few nodes of active connection (apparent in his aura) and concluded he’d expected this. No matter, what he’d expected: Willow sealed them all grimly, methodically, the active and inactive. That required touching them, something Rayne could have made salacious and embarrassing, since they included the genitals; but he just watched, dark eyebrows high as though interested and amused, judging her procedure, until she put a thumb to the “third eye” space in the central forehead. He shut his non-mystical eyes at that, looking momentarily drawn and grim, commenting, “Now that’s a deprivation. But I suppose I must endure it for the good of the team and all, since I’m your prisoner.”  
  
Blinking, rousing, he laid his hand on top of Giles’ and Willow’s. Giles shook off the touch impatiently: such power-sharing could only be done by consent. Rayne couldn’t tap into it uninvited, though Willow could feel him trying.  
  
“Ah, well,” he said. “What can’t be cured must be endured. Shall we be all evening about this, Ripper? Not that I don’t adore being your guest, but I’m a bit peckish. There’s tea laid on, I hope? I trust we needn’t be totally uncivilized about this--I _did_ volunteer for it, after all. Some minimal courtesy would seem indicated.”  
  
Giles didn’t reply, festooning the mage with a variety of charms and sigils on chains or cords. Then Giles secured Rayne’s wrists behind his back with the very latest in handcuffs: sturdy plastic strips, the sharp end poking through the loop end and pulled tight, locked.  
  
Not being a natural material, plastic (vinyl, really) was extremely hard to manipulate magically.  
  
Rayne said, “Ah--now at last we know how the Dormouse was suppressed. Are you going to do me here, dear, or not until--”  
  
Giles silenced the babble with a length of silver duct tape, smoothing it into place with fastidious fingertip touches, from one cheek to the other, covering the wide, smiling mouth. Rayne’s eyes were still bright with mischief and amusement. Giles stepped back, head bowed, arms at his sides--disengaging, withdrawing.  
  
Willow asked carefully, “Are you OK?”  
  
Giles muttered what sounded like _sodding prat_. Looking to Buffy, he declared formally, “I believe the pax bond is secure.”  
  
Hands on Dawn’s shoulders, Buffy gave her taller sister a searching, enquiring look as if to say nothing was required, Dawn could still back out if she wanted, which of course wasn’t true, not with Spike already gone on and surrounded by now, on enemy ground and undefended except for the exchange of the pax bonds.  
  
Dawn said tightly, “Yeah.” Pulling out of the tight hug that followed, she turned and walked steadily away to join her waiting vamp captors, who hustled her off without any formality of binding. Obviously, none was needed: she was only a slender child, with no power she herself could draw upon. Like a princess surrendered to the Visigoths as tribute, Willow thought.  
  
Buffy watched them out of sight, then turned, remarking harshly, “Let’s get this show on the road.”  
  
Xander went first, with the lantern. Buffy was behind as rearguard. Between were Giles and Willow, and compliant Rayne moving amiably between them. Bound with magical and mundane restraints though he was, Willow still had the sense of leading a pacing tiger on a string--controlled only as much as he consented and pretended to be, content to play this game for awhile, as long as it was entertaining.  
  
Unnerved but incredibly alert, extending the free space ahead and pulling up behind the area in which Rayne could move, Willow stood ready to slap him down at a second’s notice. If she got a second.  
  
**********  
  
Buffy didn’t like it. She didn’t like any part of it whatever, not even a little. She hated operating on nothing stronger than faith: nothing she could confirm with touch, nothing she could shove or hit.  
  
Standing in the hall while Willow and the mage, Rayne, found places to sit in the front room and Giles went past to arrange tea in the kitchen, Buffy was on guard, on watch--against what, she didn’t know, and didn’t like that feeling.  
  
Rayne was constrained mainly because Willow was plainly convinced he was. Wary, anxious, even a little belligerent, of the “You better watch yourself, Mister!” variety but not expecting anything to happen _right now_. Buffy had to take Willow’s unspoken word for it that this minute, right now, Rayne was not an active threat.  
  
Spike was away, in the middle of the danger, because he’d maneuvered and contended to be so. She had to believe he knew what he was doing, even though “Spike has a plan” was a phrase to rouse dismay in the most confident of hearts.  
  
Spike’s plans had a tendency to exhibit major suckage. Either he’d overlooked something, or he got bored and lunged into action any old how, or something went egg-shaped, and the result bore no resemblance to the prediction. For example, the conspicuous fiasco that was the _smell_.  
  
But they’d talked, after the class. For quite a long while, actually. In front of the Civic Center, after they’d stowed the pads away in the SUV, Spike had paced and smoked and flung his arms, and she’d called him names and actually bopped him in the nose once, but since it all came down to Buffy’s concern for him and her uneasiness at feeling shut out, the radius of Spike’s circles grew smaller and his gestures less grandiose, their glances longer and more assessing. They ended standing in each other’s arms, foreheads touching.  
  
“This is mine, now, pet,” he’d told her quietly. “Mine to see to. You can’t take it from me or do it for me. Can’t make it go away.”  
  
“But _I_ get the hard choices! I’m the Chosen One, not you!”  
  
“And so you are, love,” he’d agreed, nuzzling her cheek with his poor bopped nose, then leaning back a little to smile uneasily into her eyes. “And brilliant at it, too. But this isn’t a thing a Slayer can fix. Took on the ending when I took on the beginning: claiming the rights of Master Vampire of Sunnydale. This comes with the package. Have to leave me to it, love. To do it the best I can, to stop it so it won’t come back and bite us in the ass again down the way sometime. Keep the Hellmouth shut and locked so tight, next idiot comes with an itch to open it will see how hard it’s shut, how well it’s guarded, and not even bother trying. If I don’t manage, you’ll have to. So I’ll manage,” he’d promised earnestly, grimly--wanting her to believe, stroking her cheek in reassurance. “Not how you’d do it, fair fight an’ all. How I do it. How vamps do things. Different way of thinking, love. This part, this is for me and Bit to settle, ‘cause she’s a part of it, too. Always the Key.”  
  
“But you’re hurt,” she’d protested, “and confused, and it’s all just a mess, with the Lady, and Digger, and Rayne, and Mike all mixed into it, and now Dawn--”  
  
“And you. All coming from different directions, but it all comes together. I can see how it moves, love--how it has to be. You can’t be there. It’s vamp business. Mage business. Not Slayer business…until afterward. Just have to trust me on that.”  
  
As Giles returned with tea things on a tray, Buffy looked hard into the hall mirror, pulling her collar aside to confirm that the mark still showed.  
  
It had always been her fear that Spike could be dusted somewhere and she’d never know. Just an absence, a lack. In their talk, Spike had reminded her that as long as the mark, his visible claim on her, was there, he was still in one piece, still fighting to get back to her. Only at his final death would it fade.  
  
Considering the scar, her worried reflection, Buffy took some reassurance from it…but not much.  
  
She wanted the confirmation of his presence, his body, his stillness and his suddenness. She wanted his voice and his eyes and how he tasted, how he was; his offhand shy gentleness, his stubbornness, and his volcanic temper; the way he looked when he came to her and when he came, the astonishment in his face every time, above her or beneath her, no matter, when they were together in that way. She didn’t like it that he had a life apart from her, independent, that she couldn’t know or take part in.  
  
But however grudgingly, she accepted it: as she did with Willow, and Giles, and Xander, and Dawn--the other people that she loved. Love wasn’t ownership. Spike wasn’t hers exclusively. This whole business of Master Vampire of Sunnydale had made her feel that most keenly--that Spike had his own priorities, his own choices, separate from her.  
  
And she accepted that, mostly. But she didn’t have to like it.  
  
Rubbing her neck, Buffy turned from the mirror and resumed her sentry duty in the hall.  
  
An hour, maybe two. Then she’d have Spike back, Dawn back, safe and close. Then there’d be time to make a plan that actually had some chance of working. Something they could all contribute to and do together.  
  
**********  
  
Turning his teacup (his wrists had been freed--after all, inside the house, and nobody was gonna feed him, for Goddess’ sake) and then lifting it to take a sip, Rayne shot a glance at Giles, asking casually, “Is this the part where you try to teach me the error of my ways?”  
  
“I shouldn’t have been surprised,” Giles replied aridly. “You’ve worked for demons before: Larconis, the baby-eater.”  
  
“No, I was employed by the vampire, Trick. Ah--oops. Does rather prove your point, doesn’t it? Creature of habit, then, it seems. But they do come up with such inventive plans, vampires--completely mismanaged and unlikely of result. Need a firm guiding hand, as it were.” Rayne displayed a hand, fingers spread, and waggled it theatrically. “It’s really too bad of you, Ripper, to deprive me of my newest pet just when I was getting him nicely trained to come to my hand for…certain things. Jealous, are we? Or merely playing dog in the manger? Is nobody to have fun in your vicinity?”  
  
“We are not discussing this,” Giles declared, setting his cup down on the low table between them. He folded his arms. “You were better than this. You at least had conviction and were pursuing something real, however misguided. You--”  
  
“With a passion. So I was. But you know what, Rupert? After you really get _in_ to it, all the way, Chaos is pretty much all of a muchness. Random, and occasionally terrifying of course, but not particularly distinct. As a steady diet, even the best porridge eventually palls. I’ve found the best antidote is the particular. Taking on someone else’s purpose, something they’re all passionate about. All that delicious energy and purposefulness and _want_. The bright glitter and intensity. Vampires never do things halfway, do they? Throw themselves into sensation completely, utterly…. But oh, pardon, we’re not to talk of that. I forgot. Your ground, your rules. After all, I’m the hostage here, in obedience to their banal customs…. They even pay me, not realizing that their refreshing linear muddle-headedness would be quite enough reward in itself.”  
  
“You batten on them. Like a leech.”  
  
Rayne tilted his head, considering. After a minute, he said, “Psychic vampire? Hadn’t thought about it precisely that way, but I suppose. You always had to be the dominant one, putting names to things, thinking that would control them, limit them to the names and natures you assigned. But it doesn’t, dear heart: reality always transcends names, is finally ungovernable. Do you know that even a little, now? Have you begun to discover the limits of Order, as I have of Chaos? Is there finally a middle ground, where a rapprochement is possible?” He bent his head, looking at Giles through his lashes. “I’d so much rather batten on you.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“And you’d like it,” Rayne rushed on, unheeding. “You know you would. I’ve learned things, connections, enhancements of the most profound kind. Break you right out of your stolid shell into ecstasy unending.” Rayne made a wry face. “Except to eat, now and again. That sort of thing. We’re still mortal, after all; and the years have touched us. Let me show you. Just let down your wards one instant, let me through, and I’ll show--”  
  
“No, Ethan. You may not have access. You’re not trustworthy. For the right inducement, you’d abandon Digger and his plans in an instant. I know quite well what you are--now we’re merely haggling over the price.”  
  
Rayne giggled, then outright laughed. “I was your whore first, dear heart, so it’s not really kind to throw that in my face. But you were very seldom kind. I liked that in you, actually. Something to fling myself against, cling to…. The intensity of your angers and your passions, flailing about. So delicious, even though I didn’t then know half what I do now about how such intensity can be shared. Enjoyed…. You ground me, I free you. An equal partnership--does that have no appeal? Dear heart, the dark is coming down whatever we say or do. Why not warm one another with our opposites while we can?”  
  
Willow had been embarrassed for some time. It was plain both men had forgotten her completely, deep in the throes of what was obviously a heartfelt courtship, at least on Rayne’s side. She’d had the vague impression there was old subtext between them. She hadn’t been prepared to have it become overt text, and present--in Ethan’s cajoling; in Giles’ stormy eyes and expression.  
  
Willow, the conspicuously and outspokenly gay, had in principle no objection to that kind of subtext. But it made her feel all squirmy that two old guys, and one of them Giles, should be making doe-eyes at one another and openly acknowledging passion past and anything but dead or forgotten by either of them, whether to invoke it or refuse it.  
  
It was almost as bad as having to listen while your parents had sex. Supremely ooky.  
  
“I knew,” Rayne continued, “that if I answered the advert and came here, it would draw you. Out of the new routines you’ve been trying so hard to impose, to remake the Council into something more humane and workable, less rigid, paranoid, and insane. The irony: instead of bringing Order out of Chaos, Ripper trying to instill a bit of healthy Chaos into a fossilized and moribund Order. Oh, yes, I know about that. The news went out instantly, within the general demon community, when the Council was decimated. So I was eager to find a pretext to put myself in your way. Or what would surely become your way, if I presented an…inconvenience to your Slayer. You’re the reason I’m here, dear heart. And the only reason for me to leave is your company. I could be so useful to you! And I would! And we’d be happy--”  
  
Willow leaped from her seat and went to join Buffy, glowering in the hall. Safely out of earshot of whatever reply Giles made.  
  
“What’re they talking about?” Buffy asked, frowning, meaning _Why is it taking so long?_  
  
Willow was reasonably good at translating sideways Buffy-speak.  
  
She shrugged elaborately. “British guy stuff. Order and Chaos, blah, blah, blah. We don’t have to worry about Giles, though. He’s tweed all through.”  
  
“Why don’t they just get _on_ with it, then? And _why_ would we worry about Giles? Are they talking about Spike?”  
  
“Not exactly.”  
  
“Not exactly? Are you going all commercial on me? What’s that mean-- _not exactly?_ ”  
  
Willow was too frazzled to be circumspect. “It means they’re using him for code, for things still too sore to talk about. For who and what they used to be.”  
  
“Giles was a vampire?” Buffy blurted, horrified.  
  
Willow’s eyes were drawn by motion. Setting down his cup, Rayne rose from the couch and bent to place a sudden, dry kiss to Giles’ forehead. Then, like a soap bubble bursting, he was gone.  
  
**********  
  
Spike had got Digger onto the subject of the wholesale turning and recruiting of fledges, and Digger was being coy about it and blustering, when he felt the witch in his mind, announcing frantically, _Rayne’s gone!_  
  
Spike hadn’t paid much attention--any, really--to the two robed humans in the back of the chamber. So he hadn’t noticed them gesturing and muttering, except to be sure the hands held no weapons and weren’t pointing in his direction. All the same, he wasn’t surprised when Rayne materialized between them, dusting off his arms with a look of frustrated distaste.  
  
 _No,_ Spike replied. _He’s here._  
  
 _A retrieval spell. Must have been. I stopped anything he could do, didn’t think about somebody else retrieving him. I’m so sorry! What should I do?_  
  
Turning, Rayne looked at him, showing a foxlike, welcoming smile, his eyes bright and feral.  
  
Everything went golden, sweet, and slow.  
  
With a sense of relief, like stepping off a cliff, Spike fell into the shining eyes.  
  
**********  
  
Dawn had won $ 11.47 at poker from her two vamp captors (neither an itchy fledge, fortunately) with only minimal cheating and was holding trip queens when another vamp leaned in and gave an obviously prearranged signal. The two vamps grabbed her, one complaining, “But I had _aces! Aces!_ ” as they hustled her back into the pipe from the alcove they’d used as a holding area.  
  
Dawn thought _Oops!_ but she wasn’t truly surprised. Couldn’t hold Rayne, most likely. And with the cross-hostage free, nothing to prevent Digger from collecting her into more secure custody, valuable _virgo intacta_ and all.  
  
She tripped, and one of the vamps smacked her, and she stabbed him good with the taskin tooth dagger before backing away. “I’m to be delivered! Delivered, you moron! Digger will likely dust you for that!”  
  
“Then I got nothing to lose, do I?” the vamp countered, grabbing her wrist so she couldn’t stab him again. The other vamp intervened half-heartedly, preventing his chum from closing with her. Dawn twisted at the end of her tethered arm.  
  
At close quarters, the vamps _stank_. Like wet moldy dirt and old blood and nameless filth. Spike never smelled like that. Because he paid attention to himself and had people to remind him if he forgot. People who cared about him. If she was here, what was happening to Spike?  
  
As the two vamps bickered about the merits of eating her, another bunch came up from behind and swept them acrimoniously along, apparently in haste lest the Slayer get between them and the lair before they were safely inside. A couple of times, there was what seemed to Dawn a sudden change of direction, and she imagined Willow doing a location spell on her and the van careening around corners with Buffy at the wheel, trying to reach a good intercept point. Or maybe it was Spike, maybe he’d had warning and got clear in time and was coming after her, he’d never abandon her to this, it was possible--  
  
She fell and skinned her knees and scraped her hands and thought that was it, she was gone, because some of the party around her were fledges and the bloodsmell sent them completely insane. She curled up tight while the fight proceeded over and around her, thinking about Frodo in Minas Morgul and the orcs falling out over looting his _mithril_ chain mail, maybe she’d have a chance to run but she was just so _scared_ and could barely _see_ and before she could even uncurl she’d been grabbed and draped over a vamp’s smelly back, and they were all running, full-out, the way vamps rarely had to, that almost felt like floating, arrowing along through the dim tunnel.  
  
When the smell changed to dirt, the darkness was complete, and the pace slowed to a shambling lope, Dawn knew that the run had been the final sprint to home and safety and that doors were now shut between her and any who followed. There were shafts recklessly descended by rope, kicking off the walls to land in different passages, some of them lit with candles or torches on the walls, always descending. When she began to notice shoring overhead and to the sides, she remembered how the basement passage had been supported and reinforced, remembered Mike telling her that the core of Digger’s lair was a long-abandoned mine from pioneer days. Silver, he’d thought, which was ironic, given that silver was an antagonistic element to all unnatural creatures--some more, some less. Didn’t bother vamps particularly unless it was blessed or enchanted. Maybe whatever traces remained helped to keep the more ferocious demons away, since vamps were pretty low on the demonic prestige scale according to Anya, who wasn’t prejudiced about that, not at all….  
  
Dawn was dumped onto her feet and roughly steadied until she found her balance, then forced forward just by the pressure of the vamps behind--fewer than there’d been before, she thought, though some might have peeled off. Since none attacked her, no undisciplined fledges were left in her escort anyway. So her situation had stabilized that much, at least--she wasn’t gonna be drained and discarded, some vamp’s fortuitous dinner, before being delivered. She moved along as fast as she could, to reach Digger and Rayne, maybe, that knew her true value--nothing separable from her, like a _mithril_ shirt--and could be expected to take good care of her on that account.  
  
When her escort burst through an open doorway into a largeish room lit with lanterns, dazzlingly bright to her eyes, she was unsurprised to hear a voice that she remembered rumbling, “Well, Missy. So you’ve come to be my guest again.”  
  
Digger.  
  
Blinking, she made out the frog-faced old vamp: seated at a table. As her escort dispersed, Dawn brushed at herself crossly with her stinging palms. “If this is how you treat your guests, you don’t deserve to have any!”  
  
“Fetch water,” Digger ordered someone curtly, and they left through a different door. Of course he’d noticed the blood, right away. Vamp. Duh. “We’ll get you fixed up in a minute, right as rain,” Digger said cordially, pushing out of his chair and coming to guide her into it, then turning it sideways to the table so the vamp returning with a basin and a cloth could get at her properly. And it was Mike--game-faced and sullen, not lifting his eyes as he took each of her hands to pat them clean of blood, dirt, and grit.  
  
Still, Mike. Something frozen inside her relaxed. No matter what went on between him and Spike, Dawn had never had the least fear of Michael. It was hard to be afraid of somebody you’d sat through whines and tears and misery with, nodding and commiserating with the cell pressed tight to your cheek.  
  
When he paused, clearly debating how to clean her knees with the impediment of her torn overalls, Dawn reached and patted his hair, feeling greatly daring. He jerked back, finally looking her in the face, his own all transformed and fangy, golden-eyed. “You’re so dumb,” he declared. “Never thought you’d be so dumb as to do it anyway. I made it so you wouldn’t have to. Now look what you got yourself into.” With fingers and thumbs, he took the overalls at the seam, near the rip, and tore the fabric jaggedly apart above the knee with no more effort than if it’d been a paper towel. Simple: impediment gone. Then he rocked and settled, staring at her bleeding knee. Breathing deep.  
  
Not so simple.  
  
Dawn found herself saying, “It’s OK. It will heal better if you do, anyway.”  
  
As Mike started to lean, Digger belted him, then followed and kept hammering at him. Grabbing a rock off a shelf, Digger used it to hammer some more. Arms wrapped around his head, Mike took it, curling into himself protectively but making no move to defend himself. Dawn had never seen him submit to Spike so unconditionally…but she’d never seen Spike go after him that way, either--with the fury of a Master Vampire disciplining a subordinate.  
  
Methodically bludgeoning Mike, Digger was pointing out that Mike fed only when Digger said, only when Digger gave him leave, not otherwise, and Digger would beat him back to a fledge if he had to, to remind him of that basic fact of vampiric life.  
  
Dawn itched to jump in and pummel the old vamp, stab him painfully if not usefully with the taskin dagger, but knew enough of vamps to know that would only make it worse, prolong the discipline. Not impossible that Digger, distracted, might lash out at any interruption, and that would likely bring Mike actively into it, defending her, and it could get awful real fast.  
  
Spike had dusted crew for open insubordination. And he’d broken Mike to incoherent, uncontrolled fledge-hood once, rather than dust him: done what Digger only threatened. And Spike was relatively benign, as Master Vamps went.  
  
She wouldn’t be helping Mike, getting in Digger’s way. It was a vamp thing. Hard as it was, she had to leave them to it.  
  
Bending, she picked up the damp cloth and began patting gingerly at her skinned right knee, trying not to hear the noise of the beating. If vamps didn’t dust, they healed. And if Digger had wanted to dust Mike, he would have done it to begin with. Mike would heal and be OK. She repeated that to herself several times, a mantra of shaky reassurance.  
  
It was Rayne who came in and stopped it--scooping the stone from Digger’s upraised hand, tching over its bloodied condition. And Dawn realized then that it wasn’t _a_ stone: it was _the_ Stone, with Chaos forces roiling within it beyond anything she could sense, that Digger had grabbed as a casual hammer. As Digger straightened, gulping down his fury to present a controlled face to the mage, Rayne passed the stone back, directing, “Best if it were cleaned. Quickly. Don’t want nasty vampire all over my implements.”  
  
Digger cast a glance at the pink water in the basin, decided against, and kicked Mike in the stomach. “Clean it,” he directed, setting the Stone on the floor. It took two tries, but Mike managed to collect the Stone and rise, wavering toward the farther door where apparently the water was.  
  
Leaving Dawn alone with the Master Vampire and the Chaos Mage.  
  
“Well,” said Rayne, considering her amiably, acutely. “Bloodied but unbowed, I see. Which am I entertaining? The maiden or the ancient?”  
  
Patting at her other knee, Dawn responded clearly, “Go fuck yourself.”  
  
“Ah. My best regards to the Lady, then, in hopes of her continued absence. She must have found this plane…uncomfortable. Limiting.” He continued studying her awhile, then said, “Amenities. Are you hungry? Need to use the…facilities? There _are_ facilities, aren’t there?” he inquired of Digger, in a mildly menacing fashion, as though there’d be trouble if there weren’t. “Since someone has been so unkind as to obliterate all my places topside in a fit of petty spite, I find myself in need of temporary accommodations. And now for my guest, as well.”  
  
“If this is how you treat your guests--” Dawn began, figuring he hadn’t heard her use that snark before.  
  
“So you’ve read Wilde!” Rayne responded, unnervingly quick. “How delightful! We’ll have to get together a discussion of that fine old fop. You. And Spike. And I.”  
  
So Spike was in it too. It had all gone to hell. Dawn was disappointed at how unsurprised she was. She hadn’t had much hope to begin with. But Spike had said it was important, and necessary, to risk her the same as he would himself. And now it had all collapsed, and he was caught in it too. Conscious of Rayne watching for her reaction, she only shut her eyes for a minute, then looked at the mage steadily. “Where’s Spike? Is he hurt?” She couldn’t imagine he wouldn’t have gone down fighting.  
  
“Quite the contrary. He’s having a bit of a lie-down now--seems the first proper rest he’s had in ever so long, poor pet. Have to get him all rested and glossy, for us three to be about our work. You to power, and him to guide. To open the Way. The Hellmouth, as you call it here.” Glancing again at Digger, he repeated, pointedly, “Facilities? Food?”  
  
“I’ll get something put together,” Digger responded, and ambled off through the main door, bellowing for “Star.”  
  
Dawn granted herself another eyes-shut moment, trying to assess how bad things really were. When she looked again, Rayne spread his hands apologetically as if to say _What could you expect? Vampires, after all._  
  
Dawn was not charmed. “Where’s Spike? I want to see him. See that he’s OK.”  
  
“That wouldn’t…be advisable. He’s not entirely himself at the moment, if you take my meaning. Mightn’t be altogether safe.”  
  
“You want my cooperation?” Dawn challenged. “Then humor me. Keep me happy. Show me Spike.”  
  
She wanted to see if he’d relapsed to the rocking and head-banging stage: if he was reachable at all. See what Rayne had _done_ to him.  
  
“You’re under a misapprehension. I don’t need your cooperation. Only your certified virginal Key blood. And that will be shed only when and as I direct.” Rayne’s eyes were as hard and flat as nickels. “So, no: much as it pains me to refuse a young lady, you will not be allowed within striking distance of my pet until he’s fed, and to repletion. He’s not terribly discriminating at the moment, and I’d hate for there to be an accident. To either of you. I’ve gone to some pains to secure you both. If it’s any solace, your captivity will be relatively short: only until midnight, tomorrow. And be certain, I’ll take excellent care of you both until then.”  
  
Somehow, Dawn didn’t find that reassuring.  
  
************  
  
She was fed cold take-out from Mickey D’s, with flat soda, though a clueless vamp offered her some vodka: she knew it by the smell and judiciously accepted, though it tasted wretched and made her cough and she couldn’t see why anybody without banged, hurting knees and no aspirin would tolerate it. After awhile, though, it was warm and made her head swimmy, and she considered that an improvement.  
  
She’d been allotted what looked like a storage chamber not far from Digger’s main quarters, with a heavy, lockable door--as much for protection, she thought, as for confinement, considering all the fledges wandering around. At least she wasn’t being quartered with the pitiful cows she knew had to be around somewhere, to supply all those ravenous fledges. That would have been just too horrible. But maybe Rayne had been leery of “mistakes” and had her allotted a private room. Or at least semi-private: there was a vamp on watch outside the door, and sometimes he told her the things he’d like to do to her. In graphic detail.  
  
It wasn’t, she found, anything like Spike’s stories. Because she was in the coal bin now, and all that was keeping the vamp out was the certainty that Digger would dust him if he tried anything. About ten, by the backlit face of her watch, she heard Rayne’s voice outside--a final check on things, she guessed. And then she was left to the mercy of the vamp’s voice again, detailing what interesting things could be done with eyes. She was determined not to be afraid: he’d smell it, and she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. But it was hard to be brave alone in the utter dark, with the vamp outside getting anatomical and obviously from personal experience.  
  
She used the facilities, that consisted of an improvised chamber pot, then curled up miserably in the pillowless mound of quilts and comforters with which she’d been provided. Finally she poked a hole in one of the quilts with the taskin dagger and pulled out enough stuffing to wad into ear-plugs. Didn’t shut up the vamp, but at least she could no longer hear him.  
  
It wasn’t as though she was a real person, after all. Manufactured by monks. Not much different from the pitiful bot that had never truly known it was a bot, heartbreaking in its mangled perkiness and devotion to Spike, who couldn’t stand the sight of it during _that_ summer: when Buffy was…gone. Maybe it had never been real, his love for her. Just a habit and one he didn’t need anymore, once he had Buffy again. He’d had Dawn poetry painted into his skin when the Lady had taken her back, but vamps did outrageous things like that and anyway the tat was gone now: Rayne had erased it somehow. Maybe erased more than that, if Spike hadn’t even bothered to check on her, that she was OK, which she decidedly wasn’t. The fries sat like lead in the bottom of her stomach and she was uncomfortable however she tossed and turned, placing and replacing the bedding and finally resting her cheek on her bent arm.  
  
All well and good to say she had a bit of his soul, but what did that matter when she couldn’t _feel_ it?  
  
She must have slept because she woke in a panic because there was a big hand clamped over her mouth. Cold. Clean vampire smell, that was nearly no smell at all.  
  
For a second she thought, hoped, it was Spike, warning her not to make a sound. Come for her finally, after all. Then he moved, more awkwardly than vamps generally did: settling beside her, stretching out on top of the covers, the other hand brushing hair away from her face in the blind dark. And without a sound and no glimmer of sight, she knew it was Mike and knew what dangerous action was on his mind.  
  
She just hung onto him convulsively, gone all liquid in relief that somebody cared for her enough to come, though it really changed nothing and he was nearly as much a prisoner as she was.  
  
Touching his brow, his mouth, she knew he’d dropped game face and knew he was looking down at her with that stillness that was particularly Mike.  
  
She whispered, “Where can I hold, that won’t hurt?” Not hearing herself made her remember the ear-plugs. She hastily pulled them out and pitched them away.  
  
“Don’t matter,” he muttered back. Barely words. Barely breath. “Won’t hurt you more than I can help. But it’s…what you are, they want you for. Change that, they won’t have no more use for you.”  
  
“Fine,” she whispered into his neck, right under his ear, exasperated, “then they kill me. Or keep me for a cow, to get some use out of me. And _then_ kill me.”  
  
“Maybe could get you out first. I know this place. If I was fast--”  
  
“But you’re not: you’re hurt. And I’m not fast--not like a vamp, or a Slayer.” She petted his smooth forehead. “You’re dreaming, Mike.”  
  
“Could slow ‘em up a bit. Digger, he don’t know everything happens at the edges of things. Planted some charges. Collapse the main shafts. Bring the roof in on him. He’d be years digging out again. Could try, Dawn. Can’t leave you to this. If they didn’t want you, couldn’t use you, maybe there’d be a chance….”  
  
He was dreaming, but it was a powerful dream. Not what she’d ever dreamed of, but full of kindness and caring and desperation…and she felt that doing the sex thing with him, giving up her hateful virgin status, would somehow make her real and solid--not a construct, not an un-person, not a mystical Key to anything. Just a girl, afraid in the dark, facing impossible choices and offered something like escape. Something like solace. Something very like love.  
  
She made up her mind to do it, because surely the consequences couldn’t be any worse than what was certainly ahead and at least the Hellmouth would remain shut, and because he’d settled on his elbows over her to kiss and taste her and it felt so good, so comforting, all blind sensation, the solidity and strength of him so protective over her, even though Spike had told her not to and asked her solemnly to stay just as she was. It wouldn’t be breaking faith with Spike, she thought rebelliously. He couldn’t have known this would happen, the fear (and the French fries) whooshing around in her gut like clothes in a washer and yet the warmth gathering there too, which was so strange considering Mike wasn’t warm at all.  
  
Tremulously, she lifted to his mouth and kissed him: probably awkward and not at all what he was used to, but that didn’t matter because what they were doing wasn’t about that. Yet she wanted to be good for him--the way Buffy was good for Spike, you could tell when he wandered downstairs in the morning, still barely awake and deeply happy, all loose and carelessly bed-headed, swooping in to tickle her or just looking long out the kitchen window into the sunlight….  
  
 _Well shagged_ , he'd say when she commented on his good humor, smiling with his eyes and everything, not shy about it in the least.  
  
She found Mike’s bare shoulders with her fists and pushed hard until he lifted, breathing, waiting.  
  
“They’d not only know _what_ \--they’d know _who_. When Digger smelled you on me--!”  
  
“Don’t matter,” Mike responded in a muzzy, sleepy voice, bending his mouth again to silence the argument. But she jerked her head, put the point of her elbow into his cheek, shoved and twisted in the covers until no way could he not know her flailing refusal to have him sacrificed on the altar of her virginity, that she knew was as sure as sunrise if she gave in now.  
  
He wouldn’t force her. Not even to save her. Rolling clear, he lay beside her on his back, breathing hard; and she had the strong suspicion that he wasn’t wearing any clothes at all.  
  
“You always smell so good,” he said, all soft acceptance. “So nice. Always liked that about you.”  
  
She pushed his arm. “Get out. Before you’re caught. Digger would dust you so fast--!”  
  
“In a while. Sleep now, rest easy. When you wake up, I’ll be gone.” She felt him turn to look at her, felt the phantom warmth of his gaze. “Would have been worth it. Just so you know. I’ll just think of something else, that’s all. Some way, I’ll get you clear of this, even if you were dumb enough to let yourself get talked into it. You just rest and let me think on it some more.”  
  
His chest was nicer than a pillow. Still quietly lifting and falling as he breathed her in and out. Leaning into his loose embrace, the puffy soft layers of the bedding still between them, she felt solid and definite, centered within herself. Even though they hadn’t transformed her into a dud virgin. Huh. She asked, “You do the vamp on the door?”  
  
“Sort of had to. Nobody I had any use for.”  
  
“Good. Had a nasty mouth on him.”  
  
“I expect. Didn’t like it, that he scared you. Could smell it…. Took him real fast, before he even knew.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Snuggled close and safe, Dawn slept.


	20. Midnight

Shortly after slipping unnoticed out of Dawn’s room and pulling his clothes back on, Mike found himself sent off to attend on Rayne.  
  
It was past midnight: the lair was bustling with activity, since that was vamps’ normal time to be most alert and active, their wake/sleep cycle the reverse of humans’. As usual, he passed bored sentries, packs of dirty fledges digging/repairing/shoring the main passages, vamps setting out to hunt by twos and threes, pairs of mature vamps delivering cows for the larder (fledges weren’t to be trusted for that and anyway weren’t allowed out until they could demonstrate minimal control of trueface and therefore their demon), single vamps tending the occasional lights, and couples fucking or fighting as the mood struck or thinking there was social leverage to be had from it.  
  
Overall, Mike found it a relief to fall back into traditional ways. Spike’s penchant for doing things in the daytime meant that Mike hadn’t had a good day’s sleep in months. And then the sweeps through half the night, on top of it. Besides aching from the evening’s beating, he was exhausted. Since returning, whenever he could get clear of Digger’s supervision, he’d slept every chance he could get.  
  
Though Digger was keeping him on a very short leash, that was normal and expected, almost reassuring--Mike knew precisely where he stood: under Digger’s orders, every minute (or nearly), dancing attendance and under the elder vamp’s critical and highly suspicious eye. Watching for any sign of willful independence and raining down punishment whenever Digger caught or imagined one…or just for no reason at all except exerting a Master Vamp’s prerogative to pound on the juniors in his regime. Mike didn’t mind, particularly. It was normal--what he’d been brought up to, as a fledge here. It was Spike’s freethinking ideas that were a puzzlement and an annoyance. The rules changed from one day to the next. Confusing and tiring. Coming back to Digger’s predictability had felt like coming home.  
  
Not that he wouldn’t do the old bastard anytime he saw a good chance. Which of course Digger knew and expected. How vamps were, mostly. Again, it was Spike who was the aberration--wanting and expecting connections other than force and dominance; socializing with the food and letting himself be swayed by their opinions and expectations. Mike had accepted it, but he’d never understood it.  
  
Simpler, lots simpler, just to be a vamp and not yearning after things that made no sense. Live in the moment and the hell with the rest.  
  
Except for the problem of Dawn, Mike would have been reasonably content.  
  
But that was a big _except_ and probably a deal-breaker, once Mike came up with an alternative plan.  
  
Rayne had been assigned quarters near the surface. Humans didn’t like the dank, entombed air of the deeper passages or the darkness or the imagined weight of all that tunneled earth a tremor could collapse in a smothering, crushing mass, burying them alive. California shook itself frequently; and Sunnydale sat on the deepest fault line of all--the Hellmouth, with not only tectonic but dimensional torques at work, forces actively engaged and at only uneasy and temporary equilibrium.  
  
Hauling himself out of a vertical shaft with some difficulty because of the stiff joint of a dislocated and swollen shoulder, Mike limped along the passage, passing a couple of sentries, not giving the least damn what Rayne wanted. Merely going where he’d been sent.  
  
The chamber was a natural cavern partitioned into a maze of bays. Likely been used for equipment storage and a staging area for the deeper levels, back in the day. The wooden partitions were hardly more than head-high, with the cave’s rocky, irregular ceiling maybe twenty, thirty feet higher than that, so the place had the feel of a stage set, not an actual dwelling. A partial toy house set up in, and dwarfed by, an immense and inimical surround not made by hands.  
  
Following the scent of prey and the petulant rise and fall of Rayne’s voice, Mike wandered through bare “rooms” like abandoned boxcars, rooms with shelves, and rooms with stacked crates some way along in the process of collapsing into dust until he reached an opening he found he couldn’t pass. Bespelled. Supposed he should have expected that.  
  
Calling, “Digger sent me,” Mike waited with perfect indifference to either be let in or not.  
  
“Oh, come on,” Rayne directed in an annoyed voice, and a poke of Mike’s fingers informed him that the barrier was gone.  
  
Climbing three metal stairs and sliding back a door brought him into what actually was a train car, a caboose--about 30’s vintage, as a guess. Mike could smell the wheels rusting. It was bright inside: half a dozen lanterns were hung between the blank and mostly broken windows, two to a side, that framed views of the surrounding dark. The enclosed space stank of blood and magic, an uneasy combination. Easy to tell where the bloodsmell came from: a grimy, keening cow, a malodorous woman, was handcuffed to the handle of a fold-down cot just inside the doorway. The cot on the opposite wall had also been pulled down. Spike was stretched out on his side there in what looked like black satin sweat pants or pajamas, maybe, giggling and twisting around but not fastened down that Mike could see. Trueface coming and going, plainly completely off his head, wide no-color changing eyes wandering unfocused, babbling something about being Queen of the May.  
  
Kneeling beside that cot, Rayne was trying to get Spike to lie flat so Rayne could finish fingerpainting symbols on Spike’s torso and arms in some kind of thick, slateblue clay. Spike was behaving as though he was being tickled, and Rayne looked all put out with him.  
  
Without even glancing around, Rayne directed, “Hold him still,” reaching for a wide, shallow bowl on the floor about half full of the blue stuff. That was the source of the magic stink, then.  
  
Going to the head of the cot, Mike set his hands on Spike’s shoulders and leaned. No stinging oil. Would have interfered with the clay markings, maybe.  
  
Mike had it clear in his mind that it would take a triangle to make this go: the mage, the monster, and the girl. Take any away, and the thing wouldn’t go. So while easily holding Spike down (Spike twitched and giggled and tried to roll as Rayne resumed his fingerpainting, but didn’t offer any organized resistance) Mike gave some thought to twisting his head off. At least slow things down, maybe give Mike time to think of a way to get Dawn out before Rayne could come up with a replacement. But although it’d be done, and Spike gone to dust, before Rayne knew or could stop it, Mike thought his own chances of surviving the next entire minute were pretty low, which would leave Dawn with no protection whatever. So regretfully Mike set the idea aside for now.  
  
Eventually rising, wiping his hands on a towel, and stowing the bowl in a built-in cabinet at the rear of the car, still not having spared Mike a glance and turned half away from him, Rayne remarked, “He won’t feed. He did before. What’s the problem?”  
  
Then Rayne looked around, and there was something about his eyes Mike didn’t like at all. Straightening too, Mike stuck a hand in the pocket where the watch was and closed his fist around it, hoping it could keep Rayne out or prevent the mage from throwing any goddam compulsion at him.  
  
Rayne said, “You’re his claimed get, so I presume you know him as well as anyone does. Enlighten me. Why won’t he feed?”  
  
Mike shrugged, holding the watch hard. “He’s always been weird about that. One way or another. Slayer’s his cow. Could be, it’s spoiled him for anything else.”  
  
“Well, I happen to have no Slayers on hand,” Rayne rejoined, irritated, “and he must feed to be ready for tonight.”  
  
“Don’t know what to tell you, then,” Mike replied, holding tight within himself the knowledge that there was no difference worth noting between Slayer blood and what ran in Dawn’s veins. Though Mike had never tasted the Slayer herself, just by the smell, you knew. Wasn’t a thought he wanted to put into the mage’s head.  
  
Spike had had Dawn’s blood a time or two and had even marked her once, but it hadn’t gone well. Mike didn’t think Rayne would think of it for himself, intent on Dawn’s blood for another purpose altogether. As magic, not as food.  
  
And Rayne seemed not to have picked up the knowledge from him. The watch worked. A good watch. Spike had donated the watch itself; Willow had provided and activated the charm inside; and Dawn had given it to him. Mike felt the watch as a set of powerful and puzzling connections that opened some doors and shut others. A good watch. It even kept time.  
  
“You’re human,” Mike observed dryly. “He gone for you yet?”  
  
Rayne just maintained his cold stare, indicating he wasn’t on the menu.  
  
So Mike said, “Maybe he’s not hungry. Been known to happen.”  
  
“I think you should find a solution. I think you should find it very quickly.”  
  
Thing to do was make feeding a non-issue, Mike decided: get Rayne’s mind off it altogether.  
  
Mike didn’t blame Spike for not wanting to feed on the trull--cows didn’t improve with keeping: at the last, they weren’t even very afraid, so the dregs were flat and bland, not properly charged with terror. But whether or not Spike was hungry, Mike was. Digger kept him short in that respect, too. Short rations slowed healing and made it hard to focus on anything else. Mike was proud of himself that he hadn’t even asked for a taste at Dawn and hadn’t let the cow distract him.  
  
He took her fast, the killing bite to the jugular, and locked jaws into the bite as she pumped her life into him. The taste exploded into his mouth: she was fresh enough to be frightened, though without the strength to struggle as he drank her down. In a few minutes, he had the last of it. Letting the body drop onto the cot, Mike turned, stalling a moment, feeling the blood working in him, diminishing the soreness, knitting bones. Then, while Rayne watched impassively with arms folded, Mike set fangs to his own forearm and presented the hot blood of the fresh kill to his claimed sire. Immediately Spike went to trueface and latched on, drawing powerfully. At least he wasn’t too crazy for that.  
  
Behind him, Rayne said, “I thought vampires couldn’t feed from one another.”  
  
It was like the tribute again, in the hospital parking lot: the deepest of connections. Mike shuddered with it and shut his eyes. “Don’t know a lot about vamps then, do you?”  
  
When Spike lapsed back without sealing the wound, Mike lifted his bloodied arm and did it himself. Spike hadn’t taken even half what Mike had acquired by the kill: he felt the healing progressing, felt strong and clear-headed.  
  
“Wait outside,” Rayne directed, again kneeling by the cot. “I may want you for something later.”  
  
Dismissed and as good as ignored, Mike did as he’d been told. Hunkering down within call, he used the time to faithfully wind the watch and reconsider all the options.  
  
Short of taking up with a Slayer, Mike figured this was the stupidest thing Spike had ever done. Up to Mike, it seemed, to make it right.  
  
**********  
  
Spike’s demon was happy.  
  
When he eventually woke in the golden fog, from dream into dream, there was nothing to worry about or plan, nothing to do but hazily relax into the pleasure with no objection from soul or self, that seemed not to have wakened yet or taken notice of the mage or this new, interesting smelling lair deep underground, so no need to think about sunrise, except that there was something about the idea of midnight he shied away from and forgot as quickly as possible. Easy to forget, and just _be_ , lost in sensation.  
  
When the mage said words to him he paid no attention, not with all the splendid fucking pleasure rolling into him and over him like a tide, nothing to do but just enjoy it, which was all very well but you couldn’t live off it. Finally coming out of the deep crash he’d fallen into when the pills wore off, he was hungry. Well, no surprise--he was hungry all the time: he was a demon. The surprise was that he felt no constraint on how the bloodthirst could be satisfied.  
  
Rolling over, pushing clear of the golden fog enough to notice, he eyed the mage speculatively, weighing the likelihood of losing the pleasure (without knowing how he knew, he was aware that the mage commanded the pleasure: thin stuff, as such things went, but abundant and _here_ and the demon wasn’t particular) against crunching down and gulping hot, fresh blood. Being considered with a predator’s unblinking stare made the mage nervous: he had a cow delivered, but Spike’s demon wasn’t interested in such. If he went for her, soul and self would wake and give him bloody hell about it and it was so much nicer as it was, being dominant without interference (except what the mage was doing to him, of course, not that he objected), just idle, silly, floating, drifting--like being zoned out on opium.  
  
Prospect of a fight would have made him rouse completely and would have been nice if didn’t mean surrendering dominance to the other consciousnesses with which he shared the body. Better to do without, not risk it. He was too lazily content.  
  
The mage said more words, still nervous and vexed, too, that the demon hadn’t taken the offered prey, which left his scrawny self still potentially on the menu. Spike’s demon was mildly amused. Might still taste him a little when the one appetite overruled the other, and soul and self likely wouldn’t object if he didn’t drink to completion--the death of the prey. They seemed to have an agreement about such things now. But at the moment the demon was too lazy and sated to bother.  
  
He felt the Red Witch stirring at the edges of his consciousness and mentally snapped at the intrusion. With something like an _eep_ of alarm, she pulled away, and well she should. Had no business messing with his head. Nobody liked it. Bad enough to have the mage glancing in every now and again. Then he vaguely recalled something the self had laid on him, to tell the witch if she came , and sullenly contemplated it when he felt her creeping back. _Silver._ He kept the shine of it in his mind, how it nestled raw in seams in the rock like tinder carelessly scattered about. Didn’t mean a thing to him, but that was what the self had required that he do whenever he felt the arrival of the witch’s immaterial presence. Didn’t like the thought: it connected somehow to the midnight he wasn’t thinking about in the pleasant now. But it had been laid on him, and he did it, long enough anyway that the witch surely caught it if she wasn’t a total moron.  
  
Mage didn’t notice the exchange, pottering about with powders and stinks and liquid in a bowl. Nothing interesting to the demon until the mage started painting stinky magic onto Spike’s front. Unlike the pleasure, it was an actual touch--real. It tickled and opened and bound him in uncomfortable ways. He giggled helplessly, unable to focus enough to resist. Wasn’t supposed to resist. Only supposed to let things happen however they would, relax into the amber wash of stoned, drunken pleasure and let things _become_.  
  
Mage had no respect for him anyway. Some uneasiness but no fear, expecting the steady wash of pleasure to keep him quiet and malleable, as it had before. Show only the expected and the mage wouldn’t guard against what was held in reserve, still deep asleep. Wouldn’t know there was more to Spike than the evident demon luxuriating in the abundance.  
  
Another demon came and was present, sizzling and yet somehow aloof, like a color. Blue, maybe--bright and controlled. Oh: Mike. So that was all right, then.  
  
When Mike suddenly took the cow, drank her straight down, Spike’s demon didn’t like it. The cow had been his to eat or not, not Mike’s. But it seemed Mike knew that because he immediately offered the kill second-hand in deference. That was allowed and accepted. After all, the cow was already dead, and Spike’s demon was hungry and nothing if not pragmatic.  
  
When the blood began to cool and change, Spike’s demon found he’d had enough of it. The charge of Mike’s deference, the meaning of the exchange, was strong and vital enough to make up the difference.  
  
Bloodthirst quieted, though not fully satisfied, there remained no reason to bother holding on to consciousness. Happy and content, he lapsed into passive dream.  
  
Midnight was still far off and maybe the burning would never come.  
  
**********  
  
“Well?” Buffy demanded anxiously as Willow roused from her trance of concentration.  
  
Willow shook her head. “Not much there--he has his demon to the fore, and the demon doesn’t exactly think much. Maybe it’s deliberate--to present a surface with nothing much to read. I don’t know. There was one thing, though…came through clear. But I don’t know what to make of it.”  
  
Buffy said, “What?” and Giles looked attentive, the three of them sitting around the kitchen island. It was nearly four in the morning and Buffy had been pacing and frantic the whole time since they’d lost Rayne and therefore Spike and Dawn. But Willow had simply tipped over and conked, completely wiped, and Buffy could only shove a pillow under her head, toss a blanket over her, and wait impatiently for her to wake up.  
  
Willow still had dark circles under her eyes. Even her hair looked limp and dispirited. She kept brushing it absently out of her eyes. “Silver,” she reported, puzzled.  
  
“As in Hi-yo Silver, away?”  
  
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Just plain silver. Metal-y. I mean, not jewelry or anything like that.”  
  
“What, are we dealing with werewolves, now? What’s with the silver? What does it mean?”  
  
“Well,” Giles ventured, “silver is a magically sensitive and conductive metal. Might Rayne’s spell somehow involve it?”  
  
“Maybe.” Willow spread her hands helplessly. “That’s all I got. Silver. In the ground, I think. Just plain old silver.”  
  
“Wait,” said Giles, and the two women watched while he fussed with his tea and visibly concentrated. Finally looking up, Giles said, “Thinking about its being available to Ethan…in sufficient quantity to help power a spell…but no. There’s no affinity between silver and a portal spell. That I’ve ever heard of. I could research it--” Giles started to rise, then settled again. “Insufficient time,” he commented bleakly. “We have only approximately eighteen hours to come up with a way of blocking the spell. Or preventing it from being cast at all. Since you’re still able to contact Spike,” he said to Willow, “might you be able to, well, incapacitate him? Sufficiently that Rayne couldn’t use him?”  
  
Willow made a wry face. “He’s already incapacitated. High as ye proverbial kite. Nothing but pretty basic stuff going on.” She tapped her forehead. “Not much higher function at all, that I could tell.”  
  
“But Rayne will need him cognizant, competent, when the time comes. Could you interfere then?”  
  
“Rayne will have wards set. I’m surprised he hasn’t set them already. To punch through those wards and then affect Spike at all, that would be about like doing brain surgery in boxing gloves. And blindfolded. And I’ve never even attempted that level of control. Giles, I’m certain I’d screw it up. Do permanent damage.”  
  
“Nevertheless,” Giles responded steadily, “it would disable the spell. Lacking a viable alternative, I believe we must consider it.”  
  
“No,” said Buffy, folding her arms. “I don’t care what you throw at Rayne. But Spike and Dawn, they’re mine. We protect them. We don’t hurt them. We don’t even consider it.”  
  
She leveled a glare at Giles because he was the one who’d advocated killing Dawn to stymie Glory’s plans. Not acceptable. Not then, and not now.  
  
“Rule out magic,” Giles responded tartly, “and what’s left? Force? Harsh language?”  
  
Buffy lowered her eyes, sighing. “No, I’ve already given up on the idea of barging in with Super Soakers full of holy water. It’s a big, dark place, and none of us know it. And with only three SITs left, that won’t get it done. Direct assault is out.”  
  
“There might be some of Spike’s crew left, that haven’t defected,” Willow mentioned hesitantly.  
  
Buffy shook her head. “I wouldn’t trust any of them at my back. It would be like going in already surrounded. They’d be stupid not to go where the power is. And if they’re that stupid, I don’t want ‘em.”  
  
She was angry, frustrated, and jealous. Oh yeah, despite Willow keeping decorously mum, she knew perfectly well what Spike was addled with, and his retreating to let the demon enjoy it didn’t make it OK by her. But that made her mind cast back to how earnest and serious he’d been about her not mixing into it, in their talk-and-hit-and-talk conversation in the Civic Center parking lot. How it was a vamp matter, and vamps would have to settle it.  
  
What had changed, since then? Except Spike and Dawn captured and irretrievable, of course. He’d meant Mike to blow up and leave, to be in place when Dawn arrived. Therefore, improbable as it seemed, he might have meant this, too. Might mean it wasn’t the disaster it seemed but was in fact intended, all along, to get everybody (except her) within striking distance of Rayne and inside Digger’s stronghold.  
  
Trojan horse sort of thingie. Maybe.  
  
If it was, her bursting in and disrupting it would be the last thing Spike would want her to do. What he’d so earnestly argued against, there in the parking lot. He’d want her to trust him to make the running and hold back on the response he’d known she’d otherwise reflexively make, diving in headlong, unprepared, and underpeopled as though force were the only answer she was capable of.  
  
Buffy could do trust. Buffy could do subtle, if somebody banged her head against it solidly several times first.  
  
“OK,” she said abruptly, “here’s what we do. We make a show of force with the SITs and anybody I can collect, but not to the point of actually getting inside. Because that’s what Digger and everybody will expect. So we show them that. A feint. Meanwhile,” she continued, looking at dispirited Willow, “you and Giles figure out how silver comes into it. It does, because Spike said so. He didn’t explain because then Rayne would know--pick it out of his mind. He’s depending on us to understand. For once, we play this Spike’s way. It’s his thing, he knows what he’s doing. He’s the lead, we’re the backup. So that’s what we do.”  
  
Giles looked at her over his glasses’ tops. “Buffy…do you really consider that wise?”  
  
“No, but it’s what we’re gonna do anyway.” She hopped off her chair to go collect her cell phone: she had a _lot_ of calls to make. Turning in the doorway, she added, “And as soon as I have things rolling, Giles, you’re gonna tell me what this frickin’ Venusburg thing means!”  
  
**********  
  
Spike woke to Rayne’s voice inquiring if he’d had a nice nap.  
  
He woke not because he wanted to but because he had to: Rayne’s voice had acquired the power to compel him. Rayne had cut the pleasure off, too, the bastard--probably to force Spike to be something like coherent, something like aware.  
  
Spike resented missing it, but the fact was, he ached to have it back, have it flood over him again. Had felt so good to let go and let himself be engulfed, everything coming in, drowned in sensation.  
  
Waking felt like being tossed out of a tawdry second-rate heaven--everything too bright, too sharp, too solid. A little, maybe, like Buffy had felt after Red and the others had called her back from the real thing.  
  
Cut-rate heaven of the senses, bloody Venusburg, was likely as close as a vampire would ever get.  
  
“Yeah--good one: don’t remember it,” he said, offhanded despite being forced to answer because it’d been a direct question. Mage seemed to have set some kind of truth spell on him, but Spike knew his way around those: just pretend he was Anya and drown the asker in meaningless details until they gave over asking or offer the Cliff’s Notes version, so brief and compressed it was as good as a lie. “So why’d you wake me up?” he grumbled.  
  
“I want to ask you…about the Initiative.” Rayne sounded almost shy, as though the topic embarrassed him. He smelled angry, though.  
  
Spike didn’t give a fuck. Since it wasn’t a question, he wasn’t forced to respond and didn’t.  
  
Swinging his legs over the side of the cot, he sat up, scrubbing fists into his eyes and yawning, reaching to a pocket for cigarettes. No pockets. Right. No shirt, no jeans, just silky pajama-bottom sort of togs like he was gonna appear as a rent boy in a grade Z porn flick. Right.  
  
And stuff painted over his chest and arms. Well, an improvement over it being cut into him, he supposed, like the First had done, deep enough that the scars still showed in certain angles of light….  
  
Stank of magic. Wards, most like: keep the witch out. Too late, on that—already done. And compulsions, as noted. Have to see how that went.  
  
“Have a nice cuppa.” Rayne was holding out a mug of strong tea, sweetened almost to syrup. Had another, the same, in his other hand. “Though lacking most of the amenities, the service here is excellent.”  
  
Spike closed his hands around the offered mug but only held it on a knee, savoring the heat and the odor, looking around.  
  
Fucking caboose. Well, he’d known Rayne was a back-door man, but shacking up in an ancient caboose did seem a bit over the top, symbolically. If one went in for symbolic, which Spike did, lately. On account of the fucking dreams, mostly--trying to figure them out. Paradigms and patterns and such….  
  
He still felt muzzy-headed and drifty, but that was all right. Not time yet to be anything else, only a few hours past daybreak by the felt angle of the sun.  
  
Dead cow on the other cot. That came back to him hazily, and Mike here awhile but gone now by the smell. And the fact of his absence, of course, as Spike blinked and looked around. Spike remembered feeding from him, and no least trace of Dawn in the mix. Apparently Mike was still minding his manners in regard to her; so that part was all right.  
  
Spike was fed and rested, for once with no dreams of burning (that he remembered, anyway); the crazy was close but still a little way off. Not bad for someone who’d been cored out like an apple, pulled apart like an orange, then shakily reassembled as if by somebody who’d lost the Japanese instructions.  
  
Taking a mouthful of the scalding, intensely sweet tea, Spike reflected you could get used to just about anything, even being off your head and hallucinating in Technicolor and SurroundSound more than half the time. At least, he thought bleakly, he didn’t seem to have killed anybody or delivered any severed hands.  
  
Rayne had settled into a wooden folding chair by the foot of the cot, sipping tea and regarding him over the mug like a squirrel with a nut. “The Initiative,” Rayne prompted. “How did you escape?”  
  
“Oh. Yeah.” Spike twitched a shoulder dismissively. “Took the first chance and scarpered.” That was true…as far as it went.  
  
“Someone didn’t rescue you? Buffy, for instance?”  
  
Spike laughed. “Not hardly. Wasn’t on that kind of terms with the Slayer then. She didn’t even know I was back in Sunnyhell, to miss me.”  
  
“Or Dawn?”  
  
Spike had trouble not admitting that Dawn hadn’t existed in those days, except for faked retroactive memories. “No,” was still true, and enough to satisfy the compulsion. “’F I was on fire, none of the Scoobies would have pissed on me to put me out.”  
  
Hadn’t meant to say that, or at least not quite that way. Have to put a better curb on his tongue.  
  
Holding the mug to his chest, Rayne prompted, “Ask me how I escaped.”  
  
“So how’d you escape?” Spike responded obediently, startled to realize those wankers’d had Rayne too, apparently.  
  
“I didn’t,” said Rayne brightly. “Thanks for asking.” His twitch of a smile wasn’t the least convincing. Rage was coming off him like smoke though his face didn’t admit it. “I gave him every opportunity to ask, inquire after my three fucking years in hell, three years of unremitting torture. I waited for it. Practically pleaded for it. Some least recognition of what he’d done to me. Even without an apology, I would have forgiven him. But quite plainly, it wasn’t merely a prison…or a laboratory, for that matter: it was quite literally an oubliette--a forgettery. He handed me over to those military savages…and never once troubled to wonder what had become of me. If I’d died, or gone mad, or been carved up into specimens for boffins to gawk at.”  
  
There were, Spike observed, different compulsions, and Rayne was in the throes of one. “That’d be after you’d turned him into a Fyarl. Good one, that,” he added objectively.  
  
“I thought he’d lose a few inhibitions. Have to admit to raging insecurity and anger at how he’d caged himself away from his true feelings, his true nature. I thought it would be instructive, as well as amusing.”  
  
“Slayer nearly offed him. But she does that to most of her friends, so it’s nothing special.”  
  
“There, you see? The merest prank. For which I was dragged off to that obscene place, and tortured for the greater good of science, and _forgotten. For three bloody years!”_  
  
Spike stuck a finger in his ear and wiggled it. “So how’d you get out, then?”  
  
Rayne had a hand to his mouth, biting at the knuckle not quite hard enough to make it bleed. After a moment, he said, “I didn’t. I didn’t escape. Was never rescued, never freed. The whole place was forgotten, it seems. Abandoned. It took me at least a week, after the food was gone and the water became undrinkable, to think to try the cage door. Standing was an issue, you see. And forget about walking. I crawled, and couldn’t remember if the door opened inward or outward, and wasted absolute hours trying to push it when all I needed to do was crawl clear of the swing and pull.” With another rictus smile, Rayne added, “I won’t bore you with the other tiresome details, dear boy. You’ve been in their hands: you know.”  
  
“Yeah. I do. Haven't much liked hospitals, anyplace white with bright lights, since. Smell of--"  
  
“--Betadine. Yes. We know." Rayne tipped his head up, drawing a long, strangled breath. "And not for putting me there but for _forgetting,_ for not even bothering to care what had become of me, when the Hellmouth opens all the ways and dimensions, I intend to find the most painful and chaotic dimension, possibly Quar’toth. I shall drop him into it and then seal the gate for all time. See how _he_ likes being forgotten, with all his Council airs and authority and his priggish denial of everything vital and real in him! Wouldn’t you like to help me, dear heart? You can have no great affection for the Council in any of its incarnations; and Rupert merely tolerates you because Buffy gives him no choice. We're natural allies, you and I: both children of Chaos, after our own fashion. Wouldn't you prefer to be free? Help me willingly?”  
  
Spike had to admit the idea had some appeal, if only to see the expression on Rupert’s face. Soul didn’t like it, insisting that Rupert had changed, showed him proper respect lately. Even helped get him out of the fog he couldn’t have escaped on his own, though that was mostly the Lady, stuffing the soul back into him, so the soul was bound to put a favorable spin on it.  
  
Rayne wanted comradeship here. Wanted willing cooperation based on shared misery. Which was rather a stupid thing to want of a vampire.  
  
“Oh,” Spike drawled, “so I have a choice about it, then? An’ Bit, Dawn--does she get a choice, too?”  
  
“You are missing the point!”  
  
“If you say so.”  
  
“Are you expecting the Slayer to come and rescue you? She won’t. She can’t. You’re here at my pleasure as long as I have use for you. And you’ll come to accept it. Like it, even. Or do you like it enough already, that the thought of being without it forever sends shockwaves through your lovely, delicious system?”  
  
It was lucky Spike couldn’t answer all the parts of that at once. The jam of competing responses gave him time to choose what to say and how to say it. He lifted a shoulder in a negligent shrug. “Slayer will come for me. I know that. Wish she wouldn’t, it will only bollocks things up, but she will. It’s what she does. No matter how I've failed her, fucked everything up.... Just how she is, how she does. Won’t work, I know that already. And as to the mindfuck, demon likes it well enough. Probably could get him to roll over and beg, if you haven’t already, just for chuckles. As for me, I’ll do what I have to and what I can, just like always. Not quite to the rolling over and begging stage because the sound track is bloody awful and the visuals make my eyes ache. So I expect--”  
  
The wave crashed in and took him away into half-resented bliss. _Piss ‘em off, that’s the ticket,_ he thought dimly, _look how well it worked with that hellbitch Glory,_ in the instant before there was no more thought, only the demon roaring satisfaction.  
  
**********  
  
Drinking herbal tea and trying to find the calm part of awake, thinking blankly _silver, silver, silver,_ Willow slapped her forehead and dashed for the den…and the laptop, sitting open on the table, just as Spike had left it. It was turned off, though ( _Better be,_ she thought rancorously, since if left running, it would have exhausted the battery by now). While waiting for it to boot and load, she ran back to the kitchen for her tea, set it down to the left of the keyboard, and then forgot it altogether while mousing and punching and frowning at the screen, navigating the levels and branches of the Council of Watchers database until she located Spike’s directory. She’d set it up, but that had been months ago, and she’d forgotten.  
  
Naturally, it was password-protected. But it was Spike. Her third guess, _Ramones,_ opened the file listings to her and she was off and running--specifically, running a search on _Silver._ Five entries. Five of the documents Spike had translated. The first one was nothing goop on the completely fanciful effects of silver on vampires, which was nothing, nada, as Spike had annotated in the drop-down commentary box with scathing, profane glee. The next one concerned a magical artifact, the Mirror of Aelron, whose polished silver surface supposedly displayed the future if viewed under particular conditions, with elaborate preparations. That one worked, Spike commented, except that, like Dru’s visions, what one saw was completely incomprehensible without the surrounding context…which the mirror did _not_ show. Without being able to read the meaning, the visions were pretty…meaningless. Magical but useless, was his conclusion.  
  
Before diving into the next file, Willow stepped back mentally and realized that Spike apparently had been concentrating on documents involving silver--choosing them rather than other files to work on. And he’d made a directory called “REF.” She went into that and found about thirty discussions of the alchemical properties and uses of silver from the Council’s main archive: just scanned in as-is, some with handwritten commentaries from earlier scholars/alchemists/mages, in a wild variety of languages. Likely the ones she couldn’t read, Giles could, so she picked the ones in languages she knew fairly well--her Medieval Spanish wasn’t that great, but with the heavy Latin influence, she could make out the gist of things—know whether it was a spell or a recipe for stewed chicken. She half rose, intending to call Giles (napping in the front room’s big chair), then forgot as she’d forgotten the tea, intently reading through a discourse on the fundamental nature of unworked, unspelled silver. Raw in the ground: the impression she’d gotten from Spike’s demon, she recalled, now that she saw it in pointy Gothic capitals.  
  
Ten minutes later, she was shaking Giles’ shoulder, and he was blearily reaching for his glasses, set aside on the chair’s broad arm.  
  
Willow blurted, “I know what it is, what to do. Earth magic!”  
  
**********  
  
When Mike insinuated himself as one of her guards, moving up the slant of the corridor, Dawn asked him sourly, “And how was _your_ day?”  
  
By her watch, it was just past eleven o’clock, and despite all the sleep--there was nothing to _do_ in the wretched storeroom--she was achy, dirty, sore, thirsty, and miserable. And scared. Mustn’t leave out scared.  
  
This was it, then: Rayne was gonna cut her. Her own fault: she was still a stupid virgin. Having refused Mike, she’d had no other opportunity. She wondered if he held that against her.  
  
He was wearing a blue tee tonight with the slogan “Happiness is a warm puppy” and a picture of a young, floppy Dalmatian on the front, all big feet and big eyes and flocked white spots. On the back was the name, phone number, and website of the Animal Rescue League. Mike paced beside her silently--maybe assigned to her escort by Digger; certainly wouldn’t be here without Digger’s knowledge and consent.  
  
Last night, he’d been implicitly willing to be dusted for her. Now, by his silence and the way he didn’t look at her, he’d distanced himself from such pointless impulses. Distanced himself from her.  
  
She sort of guessed he hadn’t come up with an alternative plan.  
  
She imagined he felt really bad about it. Might feel really bad about it for a century or longer…when he bothered to remember…whereas she’d be rendered into her constituent elements and energies in less than an hour. It didn’t seem fair.  
  
They brought her at last into a cavern only slightly smaller than an airplane hanger, all cut up with partitions she would have blindly banged into except that her escort could see really well in the darkness and steered her around the turns with sudden jerks that made her flinch and stumble. They carried no flashlights or lanterns because they didn’t need any; and making a frightened human girl more comfortable wasn’t on anybody’s agenda.  
  
The only light she could see was a dim splotch on the ceiling. Then her escort turned another corner and it was like finding a campfire in a clearing in the woods--sudden brightness but so much smaller than the surrounding dark. Lanterns were hung at the corners of the big bay, and a flickering green-tinged flame burned in a brazier in the middle of it. Rayne was finishing drawing chalked lines to define the magical space, with an obvious corridor left open to let Dawn and her escort come in without touching any of the lines.  
  
She saw Spike then: sitting on the ground in the dark circle below the brazier. Head and torso slumped forward onto arms folded over his knees, just the pale curve of his bent back showing. Not moving, not looking at anything. Not even rocking. Just puddled there like some street-corner beggar or homeless person too beaten down to even lift his eyes to the passers-by. If somebody was looking for a model for “hopeless despair,” there he was, all set.  
  
When Dawn recalled him doing the power walk entering the gym, that first time, all swagger and self-assurance, like he was the king of the world and cheerfully slumming among the peons with his entourage of SITs and crew fanned out behind, all in sublime, arrogant synchronicity, it made her stomach hurt and her eyes sting.  
  
She dropped down on her knees beside him, flopping to sit with her legs tucked next to her before the knee scabs and bruises could protest too much. Patting his elbow tentatively, she greeted him hoarsely, “Hey.”  
  
Her touch startled him. He flinched away, huddling even tighter into himself.  
  
“It’s just me,” she explained, lifting her hand, uncertain. “Only the star attraction, the headliner. The unique soon-to-be-bloody-sacrifice-Summers, appearing for one midnight only.” She rested fingertips on his temple, stroked down the edge of his ear. “Your not being all charged up and rah for this makes me wonder if I should be worried. Spike?”  
  
He wasn’t taking it in, wasn’t reacting. Seemed oblivious to her presence.  
  
Rayne came then and gripped her elbow, raising and pulling her off to the inside periphery of the chalked circle. While one of the attendant vamps held her from behind with one hand gripping her shoulder and the other bent under her chin, around her neck, Rayne briskly secured her ankles, then fastened her wrists in front of her with narrow, very tight cord. It didn’t budge when Dawn experimentally pulled against it. As he stooped and bobbed, checking his handiwork, Dawn barely restrained the impulse to knee him in the chin, mainly because she couldn’t. With her ankles lashed together, all she could have managed was a small bunny-hop quickly followed by a humiliating falling-down.  
  
When Rayne straightened, she took some satisfaction finding herself taller by at least an inch. Just the right height to spit straight into his face. Her mouth was dry: by sucking her teeth, she’d saved up spit against this opportunity. “My sister is _so_ gonna get you for this!”  
  
“Doubtful,” Rayne said, going to a small table set up by the brazier and returning with a potato-sized crystal he moved here and there before her like a light meter. It shone yellow, whatever that meant. “Fine. Exactly as advertised….” Strolling back to the table and fussing with the stuff there, Rayne continued, over his shoulder, “I’m told that the Slayer has already made her appearance, about an hour ago, at one of the lesser-used entrances, and been soundly beaten back. Strong and fierce, but not wise, with her little party of inept followers. Threatened bloody mayhem, but couldn’t deliver on it. I’d think even she would now be persuaded of the futility of trying to interrupt our ceremony. But she’s welcome to try as many times as she likes…in the small time remaining.” Bringing back a wet cloth, Rayne proceeded to remove, with small, precise dabs, what Dawn guessed were smudges on her face, squinting critically like a cosmetician applying makeup. Or a technician preparing a clinically eviscerated corpse to be pretty for public viewing.  
  
Dawn shut her eyes, unable to prevent tears from leaking from under her eyelids.  
  
Buffy’s try at rescue had failed. Spike was practically comatose, withdrawn, and probably crazy. Mike had no plan except blowing everything up and bringing down several gigillion tons of ceiling on them, which really wasn’t likely to help. Nobody was gonna save her. She hoped Spike was fucking happy she’d maintained her fucking purity on his say-so, done what she’d promised despite all misgivings. Herself, she didn’t take much satisfaction in it. It was all such a waste….  
  
With her wrists tied and without a tissue, she couldn’t even blow her nose.  
  
Bent over Spike, Rayne roused him enough that when Rayne proffered the rough, irregular globe that was the Stone, Spike accepted it and set it in his lap, clasping it in wide-spread hands. Head raptly thrown back, Spike was in game face: stark, beautiful, and alien in the flickering illumination. Serpentine blue markings down the tensed muscles of his arms shimmered and seemed to crawl.  
  
Although Dawn could sense nothing of whatever opening arpeggios he was performing through the Stone, the vamps around were reacting, dragged a pace toward the center: hunched forward in palpable desire, their faces more bestial and feral, their yellow eyes wide and seeming moon-blinded; close pairs turned on each other in sudden indignation, snarling, squaring off. Things nearly blew up then, Dawn wildly hoped they would, only belatedly realizing, as Rayne angrily hauled the Stone away from Spike (who didn’t want to let go and let himself be dragged rather than release it), that if all hell broke loose, she would be one of the first casualties. So she supposed it was just as well Rayne _did_ something to Spike that made Spike lose his hold on the Stone and collapse, arms still outstretched.  
  
Again, Dawn could only infer the cause from the effect.  
  
Stalking to the table, Rayne thumped the Stone down there and then proceeded to scuff-erase enough of the containing circle that the vamps could pass through, single file. Vamps could have jumped to beyond the circle without even a running start; but clearly Rayne didn’t know that, just as he plainly hadn’t anticipated the vamps’ reaction to the siren Stone.  
  
When he’d remade the circle with quick strokes, and only the three of them were left inside, Rayne strolled slowly back to look down at Spike, arms folded. “That wasn’t very nice.”  
  
Raising himself on braced arms, Spike lifted a fanged vampire grin, and the two of them regarded each other for a long moment.  
  
“Why did you do that?” Rayne inquired--as though he took it personally, as though he really wanted to know.  
  
Spike’s features shifted to his human countenance. No longer grinning, he looked sullen, weary. “’Cause I could. ’Cause it shuts out that other, that you keep pushing in on me. Takes up a bloke’s whole attention, making that rock sing. ’Cause while I do that, you’re not cutting Bit.”  
  
“But you don’t want to miss the moment,” Rayne responded, as though reminding Spike of something they both knew. “You dread the alternative.”  
  
The defiance slumped out of Spike’s pose. He turned his face away.  
  
Rayne went on gently, “You’ve ruined, killed, or corrupted everything and everyone you’ve ever touched. You’ve sown Chaos on a scale worthy of admiration…but you take no joy in it anymore. You perceive it as failure and let it hurt you when you should glory in it as the creature of Chaos that you are. Succeed at this and you will be freed--”  
  
“No. I’ll burn.”  
  
Going down on one knee, Rayne stroked and soothed Spike’s face with his hands, saying something to him that was to Dawn only a murmur. Then, all sincerity and solicitude, he leaned and kissed Spike on the mouth, which Dawn considered fairly ewww but wasn’t all that surprised at, everything considered. Everybody reacted to Spike passionately, one way or another. Nobody was indifferent. Spike wouldn't tolerate it. He cultivated extremes.  
  
She’d been concentrating on doing a little heel-and-toe sidewise maneuver that inched her to the innermost line. She scuffed and broke it, then heel-and-toed herself back to about where she’d been, standing straight and innocent, like when Buffy challenged her about the doneness of homework. Dawn had no idea what effect breaking the line would have, but whatever it was, Rayne would be caught in it too, and Spike, well, Spike could survive anything. And with Rayne gone, Spike would be himself again--wouldn’t want to lean against the mage and be comforted and convinced.  
  
Still holding Spike’s face in his hands, Rayne said, “We must do this now, dear heart. Or we’ll miss the moment. Are you going to be good for me? When I can’t allow you to be distracted?”  
  
Whatever he saw apparently reassured him, or at least he acted as though it did--going to collect the Stone, then formally offering it as he had before. Rocking to sit upright, Spike took it and bowed over it, immediately absorbed in whatever effect he and the Stone were having on one another. It was like music, Dawn thought, that only he could hear. But he was done fooling around: this was a Working, and this time, Dawn could feel it as an uneasy jitter in her bones. The vast shadows seemed to twist and loom eagerly. And Rayne approached her, chanting, with glittering eyes. In his hand he held upraised a large, simple dagger, without ornament or markings--as stripped to its sole purpose as a vampire’s fangs or the taskin tooth swaying uselessly between her breasts.  
  
It was like one of those dreams where you couldn’t run. Except, of course, that it was real. Forgetting her bonds, trying to back away, Dawn fell, scrabbling with her heels on the cavern floor, still trying to push herself away. Rayne bent to take a fistful of hair and braced a leg behind her. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. The frantic beat of her heart was all she could hear until, at Spike’s shout, everything went still.  
  
Instantly, Rayne released her to go to Spike, who was curled up tight, arms wrapped around his head, sobbing. The Stone had rolled away, ignored as Rayne tried to determine what the problem was and Spike, plainly devastated, got out that the Stone had “kicked back at him” somehow, locked him in an agonizing feedback loop of some sort with no outlet. It was everywhere, sucking him out of himself, he couldn’t help it, the harder he tried, the worse it got….  
  
Seeming to accept Spike’s incoherent explanation without the least question, or perhaps with confirmation beyond the words, Rayne looked around the cavern, then made a gesture and spoke a Word. Everywhere, tiny lights appeared. Like thin, still lightning bolts threaded through the rock. The cavern shone with its own eldritch luminescence.  
  
“Bloody hell!” the mage cried, sounding very like Spike in a rage, as the lights began to fade. “Ashteroth damn her to the uttermost stinking pit of the Hell of Tulips! That never to be sufficiently vilified witch has charged the native silver! It’s become one huge magic sink, prepared to absorb anything within its range, interfering-- It could hardly be worse if she’d blessed it, but that would have taken actual _power_ whereas the rankest amateur-- Here, it’s all right, dear heart. You were not to know--it wasn’t your fault. I know it meant a great deal to you for this to go well, for us not to be forced to the fallback. You tried your best. It was a flawless beginning, truly. I could almost feel the universe trembling on its hinges and beginning to open.” Blurting reassurances, Rayne was down on his knees again, cradling Spike inconsolably sprawled in his arms.  
  
Definitely ewww, but Spike always had been a sucker for anybody who treated him kindly, acted as if they liked him. Never having had much occasion, he’d never had much defense against it, and had lost most of that, what with Buffy and everybody, even Xander, treating him at least civilly. Some of them outright loving him.  
  
And Rayne was obviously a sucker for hurt/comfort. The more Spike hurt, the more irresistible Rayne found him. Vaguely, she wondered if Spike had noticed that.  
  
By her watch, it was 12:06.  
  
 _Yay, Willow!_ Dawn thought exultantly, lying trussed on the floor, aching with relief and the buzzing aftermath of terror and panic. She wasn’t saved, wasn’t rescued, but Willow had bought her a twelve hour stay of execution. Rayne had missed his “moment,” and as she recalled, the next opportunity would be mid-day…when Light was ascendant; away from the perpetual midnight of the magic-sink caverns and shafts, the impregnable fortress.  
  
Change the rules, change the game, maybe change the outcome.  
  
But Spike, so puzzlingly strange, so far beyond her reach…that worried her.


	21. Noon

All the trace silver had been wakened. No longer neutral and inert, it hungrily absorbed all magic within its range; and its range grew as it fed.  
  
That was no direct problem to Spike, but it was to Rayne, who found, before the night was over, that he could no longer generate the pleasure he used to keep Spike distracted and reasonably cooperative. The silver created static and added the energies to its charge. And losing the distraction--and insulation--of the pleasure, Spike was bored and uneasy. He slept…and dreamed of burning.  
  
He woke with a yell, up and on his feet in an instant, shaking and disoriented.  
  
The next second, Rayne recovered himself from the corner of the caboose where Spike had unthinkingly flung him and was back, holding Spike tight and close from behind, arms around Spike’s chest, making soothing sounds until Spike was fully awake and surrendered to the embrace, still shuddering.  
  
That had been a bad one. The worst yet. Heat and flame as deep as he went, and he’d felt himself starting to disintegrate into exploding incandescence. His demon was practically shrieking in terror and he wasn’t too sanguine about it himself. No use telling himself it was only a dream, with the certainty of the noontime ceremony before him.  
  
Dreams like that weren’t a warning. They were a certainty; and he felt that certainty all through him, fragile and full of dread.  
  
“We can’t stay here,” Rayne reflected, leaning forward to kiss the hinge of Spike’s jaw. “We have to move now, not later.”  
  
“Gonna burn,” Spike muttered, shutting his eyes and making himself _not_ reach for calm, letting the desperate, involuntary breaths he was pulling in make him dizzy. He too was using distractions, presenting the demon’s mostly unreflecting terror or appetites to keep Rayne from looking sharper, deeper than the surface. Spike wasn’t sure he could keep doing that--letting his demon have free rein. Couldn’t sort the confusion like that. Couldn’t keep watch on the patterns, see the convergences he needed, to know what to do and when.  
  
He’d just about lost himself into the demon--the definition of a fledge--when the silver had sparked back at him, interrupting his channeling of the Stone. Couldn’t have that. But couldn’t risk losing that camouflage, either. He didn’t know what to do.  
  
“No you won’t,” Rayne insisted urgently, hugging him tighter, breathing warm against his cheek. “I won’t let you. I’ll protect you. But I can’t do that here… Come--sit down,” Rayne said, pulling and guiding him back to the cot and sitting beside him there, all concerned and consoling, offering his warmth in place of the memory of fire as though he knew how terribly cold Spike was deep inside, with only extremes to choose from.  
  
Helplessness was cold. Fear was cold. Everything that wasn’t the consuming fire was cold, even though he dreaded it. _Fire and ice_ , he thought, his mind spinning away into the poetry of apocalypse. He’d always found poetry a refuge, even though he couldn’t write it worth shit. Needed it now, to focus, but Rayne had taken it away, the green words on his arm, that he rubbed absently, missing the certainty of what had been written there….  
  
“Would you like a drink?”  
  
“God, yes!”  
  
“I’ll have some brought,” Rayne decided, getting up as though he really didn’t want to, was afraid of Spike bursting completely apart without Rayne’s embrace to anchor him. “Won’t be but a moment, dear heart,” he added anxiously, not leaving: waiting for something from Spike. Agreement, reassurance, maybe.  
  
Spike didn’t know, didn’t care. Could only feel the formless waiting and expectation. He was seeing in Picasso jaggedness, Monet blurs again. Edges and corners of things that were themselves undefined and unrecognizable. Wrapping arms tightly around himself, he began rocking. That had pattern and made him feel marginally better.  
  
It wasn’t Rayne’s warmth he missed because it didn’t _mean_ anything. A touch from Buffy or from Bit, that would have warmed him all the way through. But couldn’t have that now. Had to be away from them, separate, to do what he must. But he hadn’t known it would be so dreadfully cold to put himself beyond their reach, except in his mind….  
  
He didn’t notice Rayne leaving, but after an unknown, uncounted time noticed him back, pouring liquor into a glass. Spike left him the glass and grabbed the bottle, putting the contents down in long, desperate gulps so that the inside would match the outside, what he felt and what he saw, all blurred incoherence. Couldn’t have enough of that, soon enough. Couldn’t keep control or fully lose it, neither one.  
  
Wasn’t up to this. Really wasn’t. Terrible idea to begin with but he was in it now, and had pulled Dawn with him. Hoped she was all right and would forgive him but that was Mike’s now, to see to her, and he supposed the forgiving didn’t matter since he wouldn’t know about it, the one way or the other, until he could hold out his hand to her and await her answer as he’d dreamed of doing so many times--sometimes with one result, sometimes with another, but always the burning. No variation in that. So maybe it didn’t signify whether she forgave him or not since it all came out burning in the end.  
  
Holding the glass, Rayne was watching him uncertainly, a small perplexed frown between his brows. With a sort of shrug, Rayne took a sip, then made a face of distaste. Spike didn’t care: he was interested only in effect. Rayne watched him again. They were having a dialogue of motions, gestures. How nice.  
  
“Don’t get too impaired to walk,” Rayne advised, as though the alternative worried him.  
  
Spike quit swallowing long enough to assert, “’M never too drunk to walk.” Anyway, it was only a pint: not enough to get properly snockered with.  
  
Rayne continued to look worried and uncertain, then went outside to talk to whatever runner was posted there. Spike could feel the vamp, knew it wasn’t Mike anymore, and beyond that didn’t care. Rayne was ordering up an escort, his little gaggle of fire mages, and making security arrangements for moving Bit, who’d be needed later. Be simpler with a phone, but Digger, traditional vamp that he was, didn’t do phones. Likely didn’t know how. Or maybe in the deeps, reception was crap. What you didn’t depend on couldn’t fuck you up when it failed. Maybe Digger had the right of it, after all.  
  
Finishing the pint, Spike pitched it away. He could feel the chemical warmth start to flow out from his center. Not anything real, and not what he needed, but it would do for now. Drunk could also be good camouflage. Not likely Rayne would look past that, if Spike made himself obnoxious enough. And he’d never had much problem with that.  
  
**********  
  
The kitchen timer went off. Both Buffy and Giles glanced around as Willow, with sleepy concentration, poured the used scrying powder, the _materia_ , off the map onto a saucer, then started preparing the map for the next location spell. Since she’d been methodically checking every hour, the thrill was pretty much gone for the observers: after a sip of tea Giles resumed his explanation of Tannhäuser, and Buffy propped her chin back on her fist.  
  
She said, “So I get that this Venusburg is a sort of operatic whorehouse, and this poet/singer/knight Tanhouse--“  
  
“Tannhäuser.”  
  
“--Tan-whatever gets himself enthralled there and then he’s sorry. But what’s that got to do with Spike? I mean, he has a nice enough voice, and he argues about who stole from who about the Billy Idol look, but he’s not a glam rock star or anything. It’s just the look. The image.”  
  
“It’s all about image, really. Contrasting images. The pleasures of the flesh,” Giles went on, looking so prissy and teacherish that nobody would suspect he knew any except from a report, long ago, “as opposed to the exaltation of the spirit. Carnal love as opposed to holy, chaste love, with the Venusburg the exemplar of the former. Tannhäuser tried to embrace both, and it killed him. But the pope’s staff bloomed, you see, so it seems God accepted Tannhäuser’s repentance and forgave him, as the pope could not. At least according to the legend.”  
  
Buffy fiddled with her Diet Coke can. “But this Tan-whatever, he was happy there, right?” She was remembering Spike collared and oiled, stretched languorously by the fire at the mansion.  
  
“Tannhäuser was a git. No matter where he was, he was unsatisfied. In the arms of Venus, he wanted holiness. In respectable society, he proclaimed the primacy of carnal ecstasy.”  
  
“That’s like sex, right?” Buffy formulated dubiously.  
  
“One presumes so.”  
  
“So why throw that up at Spike? He’s never wanted to be holy. Far from it!”  
  
Giles considered her with an expression suggesting he was thinking about all sorts of embarrassing implications he wasn’t gonna actually say out loud. “He wanted you. Quite consistently and absurdly. Perhaps that’s his version.”  
  
“Of what?”  
  
“Of heaven.”  
  
Buffy felt compelled to blurt, “Giles, I’m not holy!”  
  
“Perhaps you are, Buffy--from the viewpoint of a vampire. Which he insists on being and refuses to even try to repudiate. After his fashion, Spike also wants incompatible things. Wants to be, and remain, the Big Bad, and also to be a righteous and honorable man. Your champion and lover, and also the Master Vampire of Sunnydale, with all that entails. Finally, he cannot be both; and I believe he knows it. So in referring to the Venusburg, I suppose I was teasing him a bit about his inconsistencies…and because I knew that he’d understand the reference but probably wouldn’t admit it, from assumed lower-class snobbery. Also, it was apt, given the manner of the enthrallment and the absurdity of a narrow ferret like Ethan cast as a blowsy, Teutonic Venus….” Giles made a quick open-handed, dismissive gesture. “Small pedantic joke, of no great moment or profundity.”  
  
“Huh.”  
  
Lifting her head, Willow announced, “They’re moving,” and both Buffy and Giles leaned to study the map, which now showed a bright red dot a finger’s breadth from where it’d appeared before.  
  
Buffy demanded, “Where?”  
  
“Well, I can’t tell yet, can I?” Willow exasperatedly puffed a few strands of hair away from her face.  
  
“Do it again, then.”  
  
Willow shook her head. “If they’re in a car, with Spike stuffed in the trunk or something, they’d be wherever they’re going before we could get mobilized. If they’re walking, they’ll have to zig-zag because, well, pipes. So all I’m gonna get is the general direction until they stop.”  
  
While Buffy considered the kitchen window, bright with dawning, Willow continued, “It’s still early. Either this ritual takes a whole lot of prep or the earth magic, charging the silver, has made Rayne too itchy to stay holed up in the Great Underground Empire. In which case, yay us! We’ve forced them into something like the open, which I doubt was the original plan. Grues, I mean vamps, aren’t too keen on sunlight.”  
  
Reminded and grimly reflecting for a moment on Spike’s dreams of burning, Buffy decided, “If the opposition’s moving, we should be too.” Sliding off her stool, she waited a second for all the creaky joints to get in gear, then headed for the front room where the SITs were variously sleeping or readying weaponry. When the awake ones registered her presence, Buffy said, “Saddle up.”  
  
Rona asked plaintively, “Breakfast first?”  
  
After a moment’s grudging consideration, Buffy nodded. “But we’ll grab it on the way. As soon as we know where we’re going.”  
  
*********  
  
When Spike came out of the fog enough to realize where they were going, he found it irresistibly funny. Flopping on the walk-rim of the tunnel, he put his head down on his arms and laughed until tears came, ignoring attempts by the escort Digger had assigned to haul him back to his feet. Then he demanded more liquor. Demanded smokes. Then he started punching out the nearest vamp, just on general principles. Rayne wanted Chaos? Spike would give him Chaos. And random, he couldn’t be read, so he was as random and contrary as possible until the fog swept back in. Wasn’t hard: he’d had decades of practice pissing people off. Came naturally, pretty much. No thought required.  
  
When next he came to himself, he was actually there: in the factory. Michael had certainly made cats’ meat of it, just as Buffy had said. Most of the windows broken: vast slants of morning sunlight blazing in, whole large tracts of the floor it would be flaming death to cross. Rayne was looking around, dismayed. Likely expected the defensive fortress Spike had made of it, not the wreck Mike’s anger had left.  
  
But the back, behind the barricade of dead machinery, was still pretty much intact, and no windows there. Coming through from the only tunnel access, back there, seeing the brightness beyond, none of the dozen or so vamps of the escort had ventured past the wall of machines. No wonder: Spike’s demon was having a bit of a fit, exposed in the open with so much light sizzling just beyond his fingertips. Just Spike and Rayne and Rayne’s three fire mages out on the factory floor.  
  
Slowly, head tilted, Spike experimentally extended his right hand into a sunbeam. There was warmth, then pain, then his fingers starting to smoke. With a cry, Rayne noticed what Spike was doing. Rayne grabbed and shoved him against one of the machines of the barrier hard enough that Spike reeled and stumbled, rebounding. Rayne caught and shoved him again, into the vamps, who manhandled him through the gap into the safer darkness, a few taking quick shots at his middle because they could and Rayne might not catch them at it. Had a fair collection of bruised, aching places, he noticed as he went down. Uneasy, nervous, vamps lashed out. Just how it was. A few kicks, too, before they backed off to let Rayne through.  
  
Hands on hips, glaring down at Spike slowly trying to right himself, Rayne demanded, “Are you insane? Are you _five_? Can’t I take my eyes off you for an entire minute without your getting yourself into trouble?”  
  
Spike didn’t answer, getting unsteadily to his feet, favoring a knee he wasn’t sure would hold him. Rayne whipped a suspicious glance around the vamp escort, who backed off farther, idly picking up bits of trash from the floor and looking as innocent as game-face allowed.  
  
Spike started limping a wandering path toward the back left corner. “Knackered,” he said to nobody in particular. “Gonna have a bit of a lie-down.” Since nobody prevented him, and the fog held off, he veered around the trashed remains of the office and the spill of broken glass (barefoot, he missed his boots) roundabout to the square pit of the freight elevator shaft. He stood a minute, considering it. No elevator in it anymore: should be a clean drop. Might be rubbish piled at the bottom, though; and he couldn’t be sure about that knee. Couldn’t make up his mind. Then felt Rayne rummaging around in his head, checking if there was an exit down there (there wasn’t), whether Spike had hatched some plan (he hadn’t), whether Spike needed to be thrown back into mind-fogged restraint. Spike waited out the periodic inspection dully, just feeling blank and tired, hurting in assorted places.  
  
Released so Rayne and his mages could begin setting up for the ritual, Spike blinked at the black shaft, absently licking the back of his hand, then decided _the hell with it_ and stepped into the hole, turning to catch the edge one-handed for a second before completing the drop. There was trash--crates, scraps of broken furniture. He landed in a crooked sprawl. Face to face with Sue.  
  
**********  
  
Rayne’s cowled, robed mages didn’t come for Dawn until mid-morning, and no way was getting out of school worth it. After miles of ascending passages and being hauled up sheer shafts in rope slings, they exited from a shed beside a rusty railroad track overgrown with weeds and overlooked by a water tower like a teetery striding alien just about to succumb to the plague. Dazzled and disoriented, Dawn winced and shaded her eyes, trying to get used to there being a sun up there and light all around and a chilly breeze that made her shiver and hug herself. She felt like some grotty blouse stuffed in the back of a drawer and forgotten--smelly and creased with unappealing wrinkles.  
  
A battered old Ford pulled up, mostly red, coughing smoke in the last stages of automotive emphysema. The mages bundled her into the back seat between them, the third one sliding in by the driver, a nervous teenaged boy. Dawn thought the teen had been hired for the job, on the cheap; his zits did not convey an impression of blinding intelligence.  
  
On the principle of “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Dawn was about to wail that she was being kidnapped, as though three robed guys hauling a grimy high-school-aged girl around an abandoned rail line didn’t have a high enough weirdness factor to make anybody blink, but when she opened her mouth, all that came out was a wheezy squeak. She tried again. Not even a squeak, this time. Some way, the mages had stolen her voice--like the creepy Gentlemen she partly remembered but mostly had heard about. She looked around wildly, pointing at her throat and fish-gasping mouth as though she thought it was some terrible oversight, an unintended mistake they’d correct if she could just make them realize. Which was dumb, she admitted to herself, when she could stop hyperventilating and sagged back between the two mages, arms sullenly folded and bottom lip quivering.  
  
Being kidnapped was almost ho-hum compared to being voiceless. Dawn felt singularly deprived and pitiful, to be dragged to her doom not even able to complain.  
  
She wasn’t surprised when the car passed the mall without turning: too many people, too much activity. The high weirdness of ritual sacrifice might be noticed, even in Sunnydale, in broad daylight even though the mall’s interior was vamp-friendly and therefore there were usually a few vamps around, hunting. Even in Sunnydale, somebody might be inclined to try to interfere or at least report it to mall security. There could be complications.  
  
But her eyes opened wider when the car turned off the highway onto the potholed industrial drive. Could they be headed for… _Yes!_ she shouted inwardly as the Ford bumped uphill, turned, and nosed in near the familiar sentry-post alcove of the factory. Spike’s factory.  
  
She didn’t know why the sight of it made her feel so much better, so much more hopeful that she didn’t even struggle or kick, being hauled out of the car and inside, with the protesting teenager being hustled along right behind her.  
  
Nobody on duty at the sentry post, check. And the inside like the aftermath of a tornado, heaps of junk, broken windows, and parts of the sheet-metal roof gone so the sunlight came right in, all the shadows pitch black by contrast, that she was being forced toward.  
  
On the far side of the barrier, a couple of vamps took the teenager off the mages’ hands. He was unceremoniously eaten. As Dawn winced away, the mages let go of her: obviously, there was no longer any place to run.  
  
Automatically, Dawn continued toward the office--not realizing, in the dimness, that it’d been battered into flinders until her shoes crunched on glass. As her eyes adjusted, she saw the tumbled heap that used to be wall supports, a desk, the broken shells of molded pink fiberglass chairs… Off to her right, halfway to the tunnel access hatch, Rayne and his mages were drawing the containing circle on the concrete floor by the light of a lantern a vamp was holding high like a really ugly, oversized lawn ornament.  
  
No sign of Spike, which was puzzling but not worrying: his presence was required, as hers was. When the time came, Dawn knew he’d be there. All the same, she wanted to see him, see if he was right in the head yet, find out what he planned to do when push came to shove.  
  
Because all of this had to _mean_ something, right? Spike, who never left off fighting, never gave up, caving so easily to capture and deep bewilderment--there had to be a reason, right? Had to be a reason why he’d as good as asked her to stay in prime, pure sacrificial condition, not that she’d really intended otherwise, but it wasn’t normally the sort of thing she and Spike talked about. So why bring it up if he didn’t have a plan and that was something needed to fit into it?  
  
Unless the plan had gotten lost as he had, with the craziness and the rocking….  
  
Figuring he was probably on the lower level in the erstwhile fledges’ dormitory, since that was about the only other place to be, she carefully circled the spills of glass until she bumped into one of the steel elevator supports and hung on there. She tried to call his name before remembering she had no voice, and made a wry face. She thought a moment, then took hold of the taskin fang on its cord, intending to bang on the support and at least make a noise that way. A voice quietly saying her name made her turn.  
  
In game-face, Mike was laying out fast-food clamshell containers on the floor. As Dawn hesitantly approached, he remarked, “Vamp that was supposed to fetch you breakfast sort of forgot. Sort of had an accident. So Digger, he gave me leave to bring it. Don’t want the Lady to have no complaint, how you were treated. Mostly cold. Couldn’t help that. Think I got some of the things you like, anyway….” Laying out plastic cutlery in a twist of napkin, he stopped, stilled: head still bent, features still downcast, an ill-trimmed wing of hair falling over his forehead. “You mad at me, Dawn? That I ain’t got you out of this yet?”  
  
Realizing he was taking her silence as reproach, Dawn tapped his shoulder. When he looked up, Dawn made talky-mouth with her hand, slapped the other hand over her mouth, and lifted the talky-mouth hand palm-up, helplessly. She could tell, even in game-face, when he got it. His face cleared for a moment, then clenched into a scowl as he looked over his shoulder at the mages.  
  
Dawn found it strange how the situation changed because Mike was in it. Nothing was different and everything was different. She was happy and at ease in his company. Maybe her body would be shed today. And maybe her being afraid of that was just a reflex. Habit. She was the least pinch of an awareness, and a force, perhaps as old as Time itself; and even bodiless, she’d still known the parts that were her, and collected them to her, and bound them with a bit of soul, and been herself. And Mike was a vampire--six, going on forever. She smiled at him fondly.  
  
Then she tapped his shoulder again, recalling his attention. Leaning and reaching, she pulled at his upper arm, and he was willing but puzzled, not knowing what she wanted from him. She sank down and drew his big hand, palm-up, into her lap as though she were a gypsy going to read the lines. But with her fingertip she wrote on his open hand invisible lines for him to read: L I A R.  
  
Because as close a watch as Digger had set on him, as close confined as Digger had kept him, there was no way Digger would have let him go waltzing out to mess into the Working his Sire was to be forced to perform, the Working whose centerpiece was the sacrifice of the human girl Mike had defected trying to protect. No matter how furious Mike claimed to be with Spike, Digger plainly had his doubts and reservations, and had put Mike on very obvious probation he’d openly violated in coming. Totally AWOL. When Digger found out, Mike either ran or he was dust.  
  
They didn’t have to talk, she found, to understand each other.  
  
Mike’s golden eyes had gone fierce and hot. The brow ridge seemed even heavier and more pronounced. Reaching out a careful finger, she stroked across his brows. Vamps liked that.  
  
In a choked voice slightly slurred by fangs, he muttered, “Not gonna let them do you. Not Rayne. Not no one at all. But I don’t know how to play it with vamps in the mix, and Goddam fucking mages. What does for one won’t do for the other. They’d just take me down and go on. Ain’t been able to figure how to manage it, all on my own.”  
  
Dawn tapped his forehead until he looked up at her again. Tilting her head toward the elevator shaft and rigging, she mouthed, _Ask Spike._  
  
For a second he was puzzled. Then the anger and frustration smoothed into his usual impassivity and Dawn wondered what he was thinking. Leaning in, he took a good deep breath by her neck, the bridge of his nose resting for a moment against her jaw. Then he rose casually, looked around to check who was attending to what, strolled to the shaft and vanished.  
  
Dawn tore into the clamshells. She was starving!  
  
**********  
  
Mike wasn’t much surprised to find that the remnants of Spike’s crew had laired up here. It was a good enough place, he supposed…and where else were they to go, masterless, with no protection except each another?  
  
“He’ll tell on us,” Sue muttered anxiously to Huey, but the three other vamps--dour Huey, uncertain Toby, and Mary who was about the only dangerous one among them--didn’t move. Mike stayed where he’d landed, balanced, waiting until he was reasonably sure he wasn’t gonna have to take on all four of them, then looked around until he spotted Spike curled up asleep in a pile of blankets and bedding.  
  
As Mike took a step in that direction, Huey eased between, asking, “Digger send you?”  
  
It was a pointed and delicate question. Mike thought about it a minute before shaking his head. “I’m here to get Dawn out.”  
  
Rousing, Spike sat up stiffly, saying, “Afterward. If there’s an afterward. Not now.”  
  
He looked trashed and thrashed, but with him awake, the other vamps relaxed and went on about their business: stripping off the colors and sorting through discarded clothes for replacements.  
  
Mike didn’t like it, that Spike was still granted authority. Didn’t like it that Spike still expected to call the shots after the way he’d fucked it all up, and the other vamps were letting him. Didn’t like it that, having put Dawn in such jeopardy, Spike wasn’t frantic to get her out of it. The way Mike was. Who had no plan, no authority, and no backup. Mike’s hands closed into fists, and he was scowling, but he made himself say, “Got Digger’s place mined, but then the party moved out, so that’s no use.”  
  
Spike asked, “What time is it?”  
  
Automatically Mike pulled out the watch and snapped it open. “Ten minutes of noon.” Then he was annoyed at himself, to be so easily obedient.  
  
Eyes shut and arms out before him, Spike had a slow, bone-cracking stretch. “Yeah, I can see that,” he reflected softly. “You lot, you’re Digger’s and you came with Michael ‘cause Digger had word the Slayer sussed out the move and is gonna try again to bust it up. Digger sent Michael to see to it. Huey, can you play that?”  
  
“Slayer coming?” Huey asked.  
  
“I expect.”  
  
“Keep her out?” Huey sounded dubious.  
  
“Let her in. Toby, you take the sentry door. Don’t expect anything to come that way--”  
  
“They’ll know,” Toby blurted, “we weren’t sent. Know we’re not Digger’s. Digger’s vamps, the mages--”  
  
“Hit him for me,” Spike directed wearily, with a wave, and when Huey had clouted the smaller vamp off his feet, Spike slowly stood, working soreness out of his shoulders, twisting his back to one side, then the other. “What you’re not taking account of,” he told Toby patiently, “is how much they don’t care. Digger said come, they came. While they’re here, Rayne gives the orders, and Rayne wouldn’t know one vamp from another unless they came color-coded.” He looked down at himself--no duster, no shirt, no boots, just flimsy black harem pants--then sharply up at Mike, who prudently said nothing.  
  
Mike had nothing, and knew it. Spike, maybe, had a plan or at least an idea. And supporters, who’d rather have the illusion of security that orders gave them than think for themselves. Mike would let Spike call it…until he saw a chance to get Dawn clear. Then all bets were off.  
  
Mike was unimpressed: Spike was obviously making it up on the fly. What would Spike have done if the remnants of the crew hadn’t chosen to lair up here, if Mike hadn’t shown up? Taken on the opposition himself? More likely, caved into craziness and done whatever Rayne wanted. Let Dawn be sacrificed. Let it all go to hell, the way he had the sweeps, the factory, and the crew.  
  
Spike was behaving as though everything was going as he’d expected. Mike didn’t believe it for a second.  
  
It was just a chance convergence, not a plan. Mike was going along with it only because he didn’t have anything better.  
  
Spike was continuing, “Michael, you’re lead. Huey, you’re second. Mingle. Don’t start anything till the mages are distracted. Then do all the vamps, quick as you can.”  
  
Still sensibly on the floor, Toby whined, “How’ll we know when the mages are distracted?”  
  
Spike gave him a long look but didn’t have Huey inflict more discipline. “Just don’t you get distracted. Michael’s lead, Michael calls it. When he--”  
  
Spike went silent, and everybody else faded back, because a vamp was approaching the top of the shaft. Spike dove for the bedding. The vamp called down a summons from Rayne. Getting no response, the vamp jumped to the lower level. He had a leg pulled back for a kick when Mike’s hand closed over his mouth, Huey held him, and Sue fiercely dispatched him with a piece of scrap wood.  
  
As Huey brushed off his unbuttoned shirt, Mike mentioned neutrally, “You know we’re outnumbered about three to one. Not counting the mages.”  
  
Rising, Spike was looking assessingly at the top of the shaft. “Don’t count the mages. I’ll do for them. Or they’ll do for me, maybe….”  
  
Jumping, Spike caught the lift rail about halfway up, then hitched himself the rest of the way to the top and over the edge.  
  
“Wait,” Mike told Huey absently. “I’ll clear the hatch. Then you all drift along the back, make like you came in that way. Sue, you know best after me how Digger runs things. Anybody asks, you do the talking.”  
  
Standing beside Huey, Sue set her hands on her hips. “You turned on Spike. Now you’re double-crossing Digger. Who you gonna turn on next, Michael?” Spike’s way of referring to him was a snarl in her mouth.  
  
That was rich, coming from her, after her Lady MacBeth night at the Bronze.  
  
She was still only a fledge, Mike thought, moving to whatever wind that blew. He was the steady, consistent one, even though he couldn’t have explained it to her and had no interest in trying.  
  
If they hadn’t been there, he would have dusted Spike without compunction, then got Dawn clear some way in the confusion. Spike, he thought, knew that perfectly well, yet had set him at lead.  
  
Mike had no confidence in plans made by the certifiably insane.  
  
**********  
  
Spike swung out on the upper floor and stood for a moment, head bowed. _Certainly_ not praying, proper vamps never did that, totally counterproductive: just being still, getting a clear sense of himself, settling himself to the thing at hand. Then he lifted his chin, sniffed in a short breath, and clapped his hands like a gunshot, stepping out briskly toward the others, hollering, “Let’s get this bloody thing done, then. What’s the holdup?”  
  
The concentric circles were made, with their Nerfi and H’loon protection spells. Mages and Dawn inside, vamps outside; and this time the outer line of writing would keep them out: Spike was halted at the edge as if by an uncrossible doorway. The air stank of magic, the mix of junk burning in the brazier, and faintly, Dawn’s fear. Her eyes were huge.  
  
He couldn’t think about that. Make a noise, pull all eyes to him to distract from Mike and the crew sliding out of the shaft in the dimness behind.  
  
Spike spun on his heel (missing the duster’s weight and swirl, missing his boots to come down solidly) and started pacing the rim, declaring, “You’re gonna miss your time, wankers, an’ all this for nothing.” He locked his eyes on Rayne, holding the shut box. “So gimme the thing, trinket, bloody lawn ornament shot-put, hey?”  
  
Rayne opened the box, revealing the Stone, and Spike could feel its unshielded keening like electricity everywhere, jittering on his last nerve. He didn’t flinch, held himself still as Rayne came toward him with the Stone, kept an expression of bored and generally pissed-off, but Rayne wasn’t fooled. Could see it in his eyes, maybe, or just _know_ that if Spike had been human, he’d have been covered in muck sweat. Terrified to take the thing, attune himself to it and let it take him; terrified of what would come after--what he’d dreamed of so many times.  
  
Stopping in reach, carefully between the runes, Rayne insisted softly, “It will be all right. The sun can’t get at you. And there are four of us to protect you.”  
  
“Yeah, sure. Hand it over.”  
  
“You’ll bring it all down. Glorious destruction. What you were made for.”  
  
“I was made by a bint with an itch in an alley. Ain’t gonna persuade me, mage. An’ keep out of my head now: it’s distracting.”  
  
That was a thing Spike was depending on--that once he touched the stone, Rayne would have to leave him alone to do the Working, fearing to break his concentration, unable to tolerate the forces loosed by and through the Stone. Touching the Stone, he’d be free.  
  
The dread and reluctance hid the eagerness banked like black fire within him.  
  
Because he had to, smiling, the mage let the Stone’s rough weight fall into Spike’s hands.  
  
Spike reeled back an involuntary step.  
  
It was like being dropped into a storm, lightning and lashing wind, rain from every direction; like stumbling from silence into a rock concert blaring at full blast, so loud you couldn’t make out the words, much less the tune. And beyond and above those was being pulled every which way simultaneously inside: terror and fierce exhilaration and hunger for more as strong as bloodthirst. For an instant, he was overwhelmed. But he’d always liked _LOUD_ , and crazy was no novelty anymore. He steadied and joined the party, grinning.  
  
**********  
  
On the theory the opposition would expect them from topside, through the sentry post, Buffy opted for the sewer line. Hunched, listening, under the ladder with Willow and Giles as the SITs caught up and silently formed up behind them, Buffy was calculating the logistics of forcing the hatch when it opened, admitting dim light, and a voice ordered softly, “Stay put.”  
  
The weird thing was, she knew that voice. At once, without question. Mike. And the even weirder thing was, she relaxed from her crouch and straightened: accepting Mike’s word, despite everything.  
  
A moment later, Willow flinched against Buffy’s back. “It’s started.”  
  
Buffy heard, felt nothing. Huh.  
  
Just as well, she supposed. No distractions from taking out all the vamps (well, maybe not Mike) to leave Willow and Giles clear to deal with Rayne.  
  
There was noise, then: vamps howling, shouting. The noise didn’t come closer, so it wasn’t that they’d been discovered. Probably. When Mike’s voice directed, “Come on,” Buffy was already halfway up the ladder and pushing the hatch out of her way.  
  
As soon as her feet were on the floor she moved aside to let the rest come up behind her, taking quick stock of the situation.  
  
Vamps were fighting vamps on the near side of a large circle chalked on the floor. Inside the circle were Rayne and three mages, all robed in different colors, like the mages in the mall parking lot. All chanting and gesturing. Rayne held Dawn, whose arms were bound in front of her, both arms bleeding from long cuts, shoulder to wrist.  
  
As soon as they were clear of the hatch, Willow began doing magic-y things, her left hand clasping Giles’ to draw on his stored power. That was Willow’s business, and Buffy left them to it, leading the SITs against the vamps.  
  
It wasn’t a general melee, she realized as Sue slid into place next to Rona, and another vamp--a strapping black woman Buffy vaguely recognized--joined the formation of Kennedy, Molly, and Amanda as the point of an unequal triangle, giving the SITs her back, engaging the nearest vamp with smoothly coordinated ferocity.  
  
The remainder of Spike’s crew--five, it seemed, counting Mike--going up against what therefore had to be Digger’s vamps, and nothing so simple as colors to distinguish which were which. But fortunately, it seemed the SITs knew the difference, most of them having done sweeps with Spike’s people for months, in and out of the factory almost daily. Out of the corner of her eye, Buffy saw Kennedy start to plunge a stake into the back of a lanky male vamp, then turn the blow enough to deflect against his shoulderblade and shove him aside to plow into the vamp he’d been engaged with. He joined the formation of Chloe, JoAnne and Lisa, and they adjusted to include him at lead just as though they’d drilled the change. Mike, fighting alone, suddenly had backup: all the SITs knew him, in game face or not. That part being handled, then.  
  
Willow (with Giles) seemed to be managing the mages. One was down; another was tearing at his robes as though he’d been doused in itching powder.  
  
Buffy spotted Spike when he moved: springing to the top of the barrier machines and from there to the nearest of the rafter beams no vamp could reach directly. Bare to the waist and white-pale against the dark as he jumped, he landed and stood in the open sunlight shafting down from a broken place in the roof. Face lifted to the blaze of light, holding the Stone in his two hands, he started to burn.  
  
**********  
  
He had it now. Or it had him--same difference. He’d cogged himself to it, could tune and alter its pitch and frequency. Like playing a bloody theremin, all the vibrations tuned by touch, a cacophonous music no ear could hear. Could only be felt, modulated, as it passed through him. Couldn’t see the spectral “wings” Red had told him about but could feel his substance spread achingly wide to encompass and channel such huge and chaotic input, the narrow-point bottleneck between energized infinities.  
  
As the mages directed and connected, like calling to like, Spike could feel the linked somnolent grumble of the Hellmouth waking as the dimensional torques that formed it began to shift in response to the Stone’s song. A harmonic echo so huge that within seconds the Stone’s cacophony was lost into it and Spike was wrestling with the waking fury of the Hellmouth itself, the Stone his point of contact. Like holding a ravening, bounding tiger by an ear, or maybe a whisker.  
  
Wasn’t gonna do it, too much for him to handle, but he’d known that, going in. He’d blow out like an overtaxed fuse and the Hellmouth would explode into this plane again, driven by the pressured impingement of all the dimensions it was potentially connected to separately or simultaneously. Needed more juice to manage something like that, someone who for all his century plus was finally as mortal as the next idiot.  
  
He jumped for the machines and then on to the rafter where the sun was--a coherent force, all colors and no color, and it was enough. Streaming through him, pure and deadly, it pushed him out beyond what he could consciously control, stretched him to his absolute limits, and for a moment they were in balance, the natural sunfire and the unnatural tectonic howl of dimensions meeting and trying to slide into one another, open into one another, with him as the focal point. Then it was too much. He felt himself coming apart, losing coherence on a molecular level.  
  
Couldn’t hold such force together, much less wield it. Guessed it was time, then.  
  
Opening his eyes to the dazzle, blind with it (he hadn’t thought about that), he couldn’t distinguish Dawn at all, or anything much. He could feel her, though, all stretched thin almost as air as he was: a single spark of green energy that was neither Hellmouth, Stone, nor sun. A connection, as immaterial as a skein of soul, between them. Enough, or had to be. Spike held out his hand, asking for what he needed along the connection of what was his, theirs, shared alike. Dawn wouldn’t know, and wouldn’t know how, but the Lady would, and he’d put himself where he was meant to be, to take it. She’d grant it, or she wouldn’t: through Dawn, to him, already on the cusp of incandescence.  
  
From the Lady of Doorways, the Lady of Dimensions, the power rushed along the thread of soul-stuff, sufficient to his need.  
  
**********  
  
To Mike, it felt like silence then. But it wasn’t, because up on the beam, Spike was shimmering, burning, but unconsumed. Something was happening.  
  
He didn’t know, didn’t care, what because Rayne had swung the knife high to plunge it into Dawn. Mike dove for the circle, past the circle, unquestioning how, and took them both down. Came up fast with Dawn in his arms and got her out the quickest way: by tossing her at the dark rafter next on from the one where Spike was perched. Couldn’t nobody get at her there. That was what was important, not the knife plunged into his side, though that hurt like hell. Only metal, wouldn’t do him no serious hurt, though it stank of magic and the pain flared up his whole side and he couldn’t seem to find his balance.  
  
Slayer, she had her arm up and was yelling, “Here! Now!” with the witch hanging onto her other arm, holding her in place, and everybody going for the called mark with dreamlike slowness. A different circle was building, shimmering almost into sight, a dome reacting to whatever Spike was doing up above. Best to get there, maybe, if the witch was half as scared as she looked. Mike took a second to slap the mage away and check that Dawn had made the rafter all right, hanging over it and scrabbling her knees around to get onto it, then crossed back over the circle and fell inside the dome a second before the vamps still outside went up like guttering candles and were gone.  
  
**********  
  
Like teasing open a knot, Spike unwove the dimensions from one another, easing them apart. Easy enough, when you knew how and could draw on infinite force to do it. Could identify each skein with simple knowing and tuck it back into itself, adjusting the dimensional imbalance.  
  
The Hellmouth shuddered and finally collapsed into normalcy. Only dirt, rock, air, water left. However, there was considerable residual geologic force to dissipate somewhere. Spike knew right where he wanted it and shrugged it off that way: into Digger’s warren. With knowing that came to him with the Lady’s power, he felt the levels cascade onto one another, punctuated by occasional hiccups that were the charges Mike had set in the shafts, to bring it down all tidy and all at once. Spike liked that.  
  
Expansive and full of joyous destruction, he popped portals open randomly. Dozens, then hundreds, winking into being, oval or rectangular with the light of otherwhere shining through or swirling blackness. He’d been studying the Council’s collection of spells for months. He understood the concepts, could make the words _become_ without even having to speak them. Drawing on the Lady’s power, he could flick a portal into being with a thought.  
  
He looked for vamps but found none except under a warning dome that had Red’s flavor about it so he left that alone and looked elsewhere for prey. The remains of the office went away, and most of the back wall.  
  
Some way, the protective circle had been breached--Dawn’s blood touching it, felt like--and he found he had access. He popped a portal right over one of the mages still standing, then shut it on him like the mouth of a purse or a really large and fangy fish. And the mage was gone, except for his wailing cry left behind, a second or so. He’d done another the same way when he felt Rayne battering into his mind, to reassert control.  
  
But Spike and his demon were no longer separate, and the soul was happily in touch with the infinite, totally blissed out on a level nothing mortal could normally contain. Rayne’s blandishments of pleasure could find nothing to hold to, not in the full of the sunlight and the Lady’s favor.  
  
Spike ate a prone mage while trying to decide what special horror to open for Rayne. But there were so many and all he had was the least flavor and taste of each, and he felt his coherence slipping as he tried to know and encompass them all.  
  
“I wouldn’t really have _done_ it!” Rayne protested in Spike’s mind, with a strong impression of indignant _you idiot!_ “I loved him!”  
  
With all the madness he’d suffered and the passivity he’d endured, the violation and perversion of desire, with all the rage that it’d come to this instead of what he’d wanted, Spike threw the mage blindly into whatever opened to receive him. Let the Lady choose. Spike just wanted him gone.  
  
When that portal clapped shut, leaving the floor empty except for the dome, the Lady was done and withdrew. Used beyond its capacity, the Stone crumbled in his hands. All the varied forces that had passed through and shielded him were gone and he was left blind and vacant in the sunlight.  
  
As he’d known it would, the burning began.  
  
**********  
  
The idiot wasn’t coming down, hadn’t the sense to fall. Was burning already, as she’d seen a dozen vamps go, consumed in seconds.  
  
Warned by the dreams, Buffy had brought a sheet of mylar to cover him but he’d put himself out of reach, and mylar didn’t throw worth beans. It didn’t unfold particularly handily, either.  
  
Frantically wrestling with the crinkly silver stuff within the confines of the protective dome, Buffy bumped Willow, demanding, “Take it down. Now!”  
  
“What? Oh, sure--”  
  
Before Buffy could move, someone had gone past her. A vamp’s agility and speed, onto the machines and then straight into Spike, carrying them both off the beam and both blazing as they fell. Buffy was right on it, tossing the far end of the mylar to the nearest SIT and pulling it into place over the two burning vampires, horribly afraid she’d see it collapse with only dust underneath. Back in the empty office space, up on the rafter, Dawn was screeching for somebody to come get her down, catch her, something.  
  
The mylar held, tenting the shapes, smoke wafting up from underneath. So maybe she’d been quick enough, maybe….  
  
They’d fallen onto a sunny patch of floor: Buffy didn’t dare lift the mylar. Spotting a blue tumbling pad overlooked on her last visit, she ran and grabbed it, slapped it down next to the mylar, and got whatever was underneath rolled onto it by touch (nasty scary crackly sensation). Then it was easy to drag the pad back through the gap between the machines, with SITs holding the mylar in place, into the safe darkness or at least indirect light, considering that most of the back wall was gone.  
  
Uncovered, they looked like mummies. Blackened bone showed. Now that she saw, Buffy didn’t dare touch for fear something would break off.  
  
“No, not yet,” Dawn was snapping, running from the back to stand…and look…and bleed on the mummies. “Shouldn’t go to waste,” she commented absently, watching the steady drops fall from her wounded arms.  
  
One of the mummies suddenly moved, lurched, and latched onto Dawn’s arm above the elbow, feeding. Since Dawn did nothing but shut her eyes and stand there, Buffy uneasily let them alone. The blackened, crisped skin flaked off, revealing fresh, whole skin underneath, bone and muscle reknitting as they all stood around watching. Too broad-shouldered to be Spike. Spike must be the other one. That wasn’t moving.  
  
Amanda produced a knife and without hesitation slashed a forearm, then held the knife out blindly for someone to take. And she did, and did the same. Within a minute, all nineteen SITs were bleeding on Spike, making various wry, wincing faces but doing it just the same. After Amanda threw up and Rona fainted, the three volunteers from the class came and took the knife and offered their contribution.  
  
They hadn’t all come to Buffy’s summons. One SIT was pregnant; three had too great a distance to come--Europe; Canada; New Jersey--to get there in time; one couldn’t wheedle the money from her parents and tried to hitchhike. That hadn’t gone well--she’d ended up having to conk the driver and been stranded, with a wrecked car, in downtown St. Louis. But all who could had come to Buffy’s claim that Spike was in desperate need of help and backup.  
  
Not for her, or for the Hellmouth. For Spike.  
  
Who was nearly back and naked and mostly surrounded by underage girls. Buffy adjusted the mylar to waist-high and got a few _oh, come on!_ glares for her efforts before the girls shifted their interest to Mike, likewise pantsless, now folded into Dawn’s arm that Willow wasn’t bandaging.  
  
Spike’s body was no longer absorbing the blood, it was just running off, so everybody seemed to agree that was enough. They paired off and began bandaging one another with supplies from Willow’s kit.  
  
Spike’s hair was coming in sandy-brown and longer than he usually tolerated. Bemused, Buffy bent and touched it--soft, ungelled, slightly curly. She’d never seen its natural state. So she wasn’t prepared when he came up at her, golden-eyed and game-faced, and sank his fangs into the join of her neck and shoulder.  
  
It was euphoric. It was too much. It probably wasn’t a good idea.  
  
After he’d fed for a minute or so, Buffy held him, her cheek against his, rubbing circles on his back and telling him softly, “It’s OK. It’s OK,” until, more aware, he licked the wound shut and just rested against her.  
  
She’d be a little lightheaded from it, it was more than he usually took, but the blood would regenerate by morning. They were a good team that way, she thought.  
  
**********  
  
Spike woke vaguely, gradually, to the sound of familiar children’s voices.  
  
Dawn was saying, “--couldn’t even yell ‘Help! Get me down from here!’ and bleeding all over the place--”  
  
“You should watch that tendency to get sliced up,” put in Amanda’s dry earnest voice, the one she used when she thought she was trying to make a joke. “Not only will people start to talk--in a house full of vampires, you could get a reputation as a tease.”  
  
“It’s not _full_ of vampires,” Dawn huffed. “Only one!”  
  
“In residence, anyway.” Rona’s drawl. “The other one just hanging around, all mopy and lovelorn--”  
  
General laughter and the sound…of a pillow being thrown. Took Spike a moment to identify it. Then Candy, of the top-knot and edible-looking unitards, piped up breathlessly, "Anybody else see it? _I_ saw it, just like before, only, like, more so. Like he was made of light, and these big wings spreading out, past the walls and the roof, even.... He's an angel! Like totally!"  
  
"Yeah, right," responded Rona, unimpressed. "And I'm Aaliyah."  
  
Molly put in, “What’s this business about Mike getting stabbed with an enchanted knife?”  
  
“Oh, that was good,” Dawn responded eagerly. “It wouldn’t close, and you can’t kill a vamp by simple blood loss, but he was all twisted around about tasting me, well, drinking from me, really, without my saying he could, and frankly, he was just a mess. Not even counting the burnage he was so disgusted about, he pretty much saved Spike’s life, well we all did, but afterward? He’s all, ‘It’s so dumb, doesn’t know what got into him to do such a dumb thing,’ so he won’t have to admit why he did it, you know how he is.”  
  
“Lunkhead,” agreed Sue fondly. “Pretty much always been like that. Decorative, though. Always thought so. Then, after I got vamped, I--”  
  
“Nobody wants to hear about that, Sue,” Amanda put in quellingly.  
  
“I do,” Kennedy objected. “Vamps got a right to talk, same as anybody.”  
  
“Leave it, Ken,” said Rona. “Sue, full details of your disgusting love life later. In private.”  
  
“Anyway,” Dawn said firmly, reclaiming the floor, “so you remember about the silver, about Willow turning it magic-negative, big magic suckage? Well, Buffy was there when she did it, and she had this sterling anklet, seveeere icky with a skull on it and everything--”  
  
“From Spike,” commented Kennedy. “No brainer.”  
  
“Well, what do you think? So it was affected too, see? Anyway, Willow made Buffy take off the anklet and laid it on the wound and it closed up, just like that. Right while you looked.”  
  
“Was this the same knife that cut you?” Amanda asked in a deliberate, puzzled voice, worrying at a detail. “They why--”  
  
“Well, that’s nothing,” Dawn responded, sounding embarrassed. “Well, if you must know, I healed myself. I could have done it anytime. But I didn’t. Because Spike, he needed the pure sacrifice and everything. To do what he was doing. For his plan. My mom was with me for a little while there, and she showed me how but it had to be later, you see, in case…. Well, in case.”  
  
“What are you going to do about him?” inquired Kennedy.  
  
“About who?”  
  
“Don’t be cute. About Mike, of course.”  
  
“Is he an angel, too?” Candy gushed and was ignored, except for Dawn, who replied, patient sage instructing naive acolyte, “There are all sorts of spiritual beings. Maybe some of them are angels. Most of them...not so much. Not in Sunnydale, anyway. We get the fangy kind. The other kind move to L.A.” (Some knowing snickers.) “As to Mike, I don’t see that I need to do anything about him,” Dawn went on in the tone that usually went with flipping hair. “He’s fine just as he is. Doesn’t need improving. We talked a long while last night on the phone, and--”  
  
“Is he your boyfriend or not?” Rona demanded.  
  
“Why does he have to be anything? We’re what we are, and it suits us. Is Spike Buffy’s boyfriend? Are they making wedding plans? Not hardly! They are, and they do, what suits them. I don’t see why I can’t do the same.”  
  
“That’s not realistic,” put in Amanda sadly. “You can’t be seventeen forever.”  
  
A silence. Then Dawn said, “I don’t see why not. Real is relative, ‘Manda. And seventeen seems a pretty good age to be. Have it all and not give up anything. Anybody. When you get involved with vamps--”  
  
“So are you?” Rona interrupted avidly. “Involved with vamps?”  
  
“Well, of course: Spike! And I’m certainly not gonna leave him with nobody but Buffy to watch out for him. And Mike…well, he likes how I smell. And how I taste. Likes it a lot. Not high on the traditional boyfriend-o-meter, but it’s important to him. When you hang out with vamps you have to be flexible about things like that.”  
  
“If you say so,” commented Amanda dubiously.  
  
Still mostly asleep, listening to the children’s voices happily bickering and gossiping, Spike wasn’t sure when he was. Couldn’t make it fit together. Seemed as if he was back in Casa Spike, half the SITs quartered there and underfoot at all hours. But Casa Spike was gone, burned; and Sue hadn’t been a vampire then. But he’d heard Molly’s voice, and Chloe’s, and others from that time that weren’t a part of things anymore. Not Kim, though. He’d been waiting for Kim to chime in, laughing and blunt, the way he remembered her…. And Candy was from the class, didn't fit with a gaggle of SITs, yet here she was, vapid and visionary. All a jumble of past and present he couldn't make sense of.  
  
Blinking slowly, he pushed up onto his elbows and saw he was in Buffy’s room. In Buffy’s narrow bed, alone in it, more’s the pity. And starkers under the sheet, might as well be covered with fucking cellophane for all the good it did in a room full of children--  
  
Who were crying, “Oh, he’s awake! Buffy, he’s awake!” and pounding out into the hall to lean over the stair railing to report such remarkable news.  
  
Very strange.  
  
Dawn was still here, though. He noticed as he reached down for the blanket, to put another layer between his naughty bits and the unaccountable audience of chattering girlflesh certain to note every detail. Once they came back, which he was sure they would. Unless prevented…. Dawn waggled fingers at him, saying, “Hi,” like she expected him to growl and bark at her.  
  
“What’s all this, then?” Spike asked, sitting up now he was decently covered and pushing both hands through his hair, finding it in deplorable condition, every which way and too long and he didn’t know how that had happened. Likely looked like a dandelion puff.  
  
“How much do you remember?” Dawn asked cautiously. “Have you noticed your arm?”  
  
Spike looked, and the green writing was back, spiraling around his left arm. The line of poetry that meant _Dawn_ he’d incised into himself, that he’d meant for forever.  
  
“I think it never really went away,” Dawn said. “He couldn’t change it, so he hid it. To make you feel alone, unconnected. But it was always there, between us. Like the soul. You gonna leave off about that now, Spike? Nagging me to get a different connection? Because I won’t. Ever.”  
  
She watched him rub the tat, though there was nothing different to the touch. Not a whit magical. Pure symbol, pure meaning, deeply felt. A good antidote for all Rayne’s powerful unreality that meant nothing, that he’d accepted but never believed.  
  
“Fetch me some pants, Bit,” Spike directed absently, thinking back. He could remember as far as the burning. Whatever came after, he knew nothing about.  
  
So maybe those dreams would leave off, now. Maybe with no Hellmouth to tempt and roil things up, Michael would be able to manage things fine on his own. Spike wanted none of it back. And Buffy, she could have her escort service without half of ‘em getting eaten the first night, and run her class…or whatever she pleased, didn’t matter to him, so long as it was what she wanted. Vamp population should be manageable several years, anyway: take that long for any of Digger’s lot to inchworm back to the surface and make anything like a nuisance of themselves.  
  
And he could settle down to the translation so long as the fucking Council didn’t renege, or renege further…and likely Rupert might be a help with that, if they could ever get the bloody wanker to actually leave and then stay gone…. And the odd challenge fight up to Willy’s, just to keep things interesting and remind anybody who cared who the true Master of Sunnydale was even if he left the day-to-day matters to Michael.  
  
Or just decide hour to hour, minute to minute, what he felt like doing. Be in the moment, like proper vamps were.  
  
He was done with plans.  
  
When Dawn pulled out a pair of folded black jeans--didn’t have to hunt for the right drawer, he noticed: must have come across it in secret Buffy-clothes-borrowing reconnaissance--and set it on the foot of the bed, he said, “Now you clear out. Don’t need anybody to teach me how to put m’ pants on. Don’t need an audience, neither.”  
  
“Not a morning person,” Dawn observed wisely. “Just a second, then, before the thundering herd stampedes back. I understand now. About why you wanted me as the pax bond, why you had me taken. Because you wanted _you_ taken, and it would need both of us to do it. We both had to be there.”  
  
Wrapping the blanket around him as he rose, Spike responded, “Yeah. So?”  
  
“Well, I’m forgiving you, is what. You could at least appreciate it!”  
  
“Morning?” Spike wondered, looking to the bright windows.  
  
Buffy came in then, and came straight at him, and lifted on her toes to clasp hands around the back of his neck and pull his head down for a nice long snog, and Spike didn’t notice when Dawn left or when he forgot about holding the blanket in place.  
  
“It’s Saturday,” Buffy explained simply, when she finally had to break for air. “You slept all yesterday afternoon, and then all night. Nearly twenty-four hours of your famous horizontal funeral statuary impression. Not a twitch, not a breath. I was beginning to get a little worried.”  
  
Putting on pants didn’t seem all that important anymore. Taking Buffy’s arms at the elbow, Spike flopped back on the bed, pulling her with him.  
  
As he started undoing the buttons of her blouse, Buffy pushed at his shoulder, not very hard, protesting, “But they’re all waiting to see you. They’ll know!”  
  
“Hate to break it to you, pet, but they’ve known what we get up to some time, now. Why didn’t you pick a sweatshirt, like a sensible woman?”  
  
Buffy slapped his hand away, no harder than a kitten paw, and set to work on the buttons herself. Eyes downcast, she asked, “Are you back now? Really _back_ back?”  
  
“Let you be the judge of that,” Spike said, and pounced her backward.  
  
Popped buttons flew everywhere.  
  
  
 _Finis_

**Author's Note:**

> Continued in the unfinished _Blood Price._


End file.
